l?. 


University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

No.  1865:     November  20,  1918 


THE  KING  IN  HAMLET 


BY 


HOWARD  MUMFORD  JONES 

Associate  Professor  of  Comparative  Literatui^ 


Dtu  ^  y  w/2 


COMPARATIVE  LITE 


Riffrtfli?E*Sfe 


RIES  No.  1 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  TEXAS 

AUSTIN 


-^'    AUG  '-\ 

^^  mi 

1     V 


Publications  of  the  University  of  Texas 

Publications  Committee: 


Frederic  Duncalf 
KiLLis  Campbell 
D.  B.  Casteel 
F.  W.  Graff 


C.  T.  Gray 
E.  J.  Mathews 
C.  E.  RowE 
A.  E.  Trombly 


The  University  publishes  bulletins  six  times  a  month, 
so  numbered  that  the  first  two  digits  of  the  number  show 
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should  be  addressed  to  University  Publications,  University 
of  Texas,  Austin. 


1543-7485-4-9-21-1000 


University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

No.  1865:     November  20,  1918 


THE  KING  IN  HAMLET 


BY 


HOWARD  MUM  FORD  JONES 

Associate  Professor  of  Comparative  Literature 


COMPARATIVE  LITERATURE  SERIES  No.  1 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE  UNIVERSITY  SIX  TIMES  A  MONTH,  AND    ENTERED  AS 

SECOND-CLASS  MATTER  AT  THE  POSTOFFICE  AT  AUSTIN.  TEXAS. 

UNDER  THE  ACT  OF  AUGUST  24,  1912 


^Xr^rd^a^ 


Q 


The  benefits  of  education  and  of 
useful  knowledge,  generally  diffused 
through  a  community,  are  essential 
to  the  preservation  of  a  free  govern- 
ment. 

Sam  Houston 


Cultivated  mind  is  the  guardian 
genius  of  democracy.  ...  It  is  the 
only  dictator  that  freemen  acknowl- 
edge and  the  only  security  that  free- 
men desire. 

Mirabeau  B.  Lamar 


THE  KING  IN  HAMLET 


BY 

HOWARD  MUMFORD  JONES 

Associate  Professor  of  Comparative  Literature 


f 


To  my  earliest  and 
kindest  critic 

David  Orland  Coate 


jLhatj 


m^^auu 


iJ 


PREFACE 


I  am  deeply  indebted  to  my  colleague,  Professor  Robert 
A.  Law,  for  having  read  the  proof  of  this  bulletin,  and  for 
saving  me  from  many  errors. 

Line  references  throughout  are  to  the  Cambridge  Shake- 
speare. 

This  bulletin  was  authorized  in  April,  1921,  but  is  num- 
bered in  the  1918  series  in  order  to  complete  the  series  for 
that  year  in  conformity  with  postal  requirements. 


THE  KING  IN  HAMLET 


"Hamlet/'  said  Professor  Kittredge  in  his  admirable  me- 
morial address  on  Shakespeare,  "is  a  family  tragedy."  This 
is  probably  the  first  profoundly  original  criticism  of  the  play 
since  Goethe's  famous  "oak-tree  in  a  costly  vase."  I  mean 
by  that  not  to  deny  the  insight  and  genuine  truth  of  many 
studies  of  Hamlet,  notably  Werder's  and  Professor  Brad- 
ley's, but  to  indicate  that  Professor  Kittredge  forces  us 
back  to  first  principles,  compels  us  to  look  at  the  play  as 
though  we  knew  nothing  about  it — compels  us,  in  short,  to 
look  at  the  play  which  Shakespeare  wrote  instead  of  the 
acting  version  that  most  of  us  have  in  mind  when  we  think 
of  Hamlet.  For  to  most  of  us  Hamlet  is  the  tragedy  of  the 
prince  of  Denmark,  and  at  once  we  think  of  Hamlet  in  black, 
Hamlet  soliloquizing,  Hamlet  instructing  the  players,  Ham- 
let and  the  grave-diggers — passages  which  great  actors  have 
made  memorable  and  which  Bernard  Shaw,  not  unnaturally, 
finds  tedious  and  a  little  dull. 

Hamlet  is  a  family  tragedy.  The  Hamlet  that  is  acted  is 
not  a  family  tragedy,  but  a  traditional  perversion  of  the 
play  which,  in  its  way,  is  as  far  from  Shakespeare's  Hamlet 
as  the  modern  Shylock  is  from  his  Jew  of  Venice.  No 
play  is  so  swaddled  in  traditions.  Back  of  these  traditions 
lies  always  the  conviction  that  Hamlet  is  the  center  of  the 
tragedy,  so  that  we  have  a  foolish  phrase  about  Hamlet 
with  Hamlet  left  out.  Now,  that  Hamlet  is  the  center  of  the 
play  nobody  will  deny,  but  it  is  in  a  sense  very  different  from 
that  in  which  the  actor  thinks  of  the  tragedy.  For  a  center 
implies  a  circumference,  and  with  our  insane  love  of  the 
star  system  we  have  had  many  Hamlets,  each  the  center  of 
the  play,  but  in  no  case  have  we  had  the  circumference  which 
Shakespeare  plainly  indicated  should  be  there.  For,  when 
the  star  has  cast  himself  as  the  prince,  he  casts  his  ablest 


10  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

assistant  as  Polonius,  and  his  leading  lady  as  Ophelia,  though 
how  any  tragic  actress  can  overlook  the  amazing  Gertrude 
in  favor  of  a  trite  mad  scene,  passes  understanding.  Then, 
in  the  next  order  of  importance,  come  the  grave-diggers  and 
Horatio,  and  after  them  the  smaller  fry — the  ghost,  Laertes, 
Rosencrantz  and  his  twin,  and,  to  judge  by  the  traditional 
production,  the  king  and  queen  last  of  all. 

On  the  stage  the  king  is  usually  played  by  a  robustious 
fellow  in  a  red  wig  who  tears  a  passion  to  tatters,  splits  the 
ears  of  the  groundlings,  and  blunders  through  five  acts  of 
Shakespeare's  most  complicated  intrigue  with  no  evidence 
that  he  has  ever  read  the  play.  Perhaps  it  is  the  star's  in- 
stinct that  leads  him  to  subordinate  the  king  and  make  him 
an  Elizabethan  Herod  who  needs  only  to  swear  by  Mahound 
to  have  stepped  off  a  mystery  stage ;  for,  were  the  role  once 
given  half  the  study  lavished  upon  that  of  the  first  grave- 
digger,  it  is  possible  the  king  might  become  what  Shake- 
speare created,  a  role  that  approaches  the  star's  in  dramatic 
interest.  The  five  acts  of  Hamlet  are,  in  Professor  Kit- 
tredge's  phrase,  a  long  duel  between  two  adroit  and  skillful 
men,  but  the  Claudius  that  is  played  on  the  stage  is  a  bogey- 
man. There  the  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a  king  is  degraded 
below  the  intelligence  of  a  villain  in  melodrama,  and  as  a 
result  Hamlet  has  nothing  to  fight  against,  so  that  the  critics 
have  had  to  fall  back  upon  sublime  theories  about  his  weak 
will  and  his  inner  conflict. 

And  the  queen,  if  not  so  completely  neglected,  is  always 
subordinate  to  the  trite  Ophelia — largely,  I  suppose,  because 
Ophelia  goes  mad  like  Lucia  in  the  opera,  and  with  the  same 
theatric  unreality.  A  lady  in  a  red  gown  who  lets  her- 
self be  managed,  a  coarse,  vulgar  woman  who,  after  a  scene 
with  her  son  that  is  usually  staged  like  something  from 
Victor  Hugo,  is  perfectly  brazen  five  minutes  afterward  and 
throughout  acts  four  and  five  betrays  no  more  consciousness 
of  the  inner  conviction  of  sin  than  a  wooden  thing — this  is 
the  queen  as  she  is  played.  But  in  point  of  fact  Shakespeare 
dealt  very  subtly  with  her:  contriving,  for  instance,  after 
the  closet  scene  that  she  shall  appear  (except  at  the  close) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  11 

always  in  conjunction  with  the  innocent  Ophelia,  living  or 
dead.  By  this  contrast  he  sought,  I  think,  to  make  all  the 
plainer  her  deep  sense  of  tragic  guilt,  her  suffering,  her 
broken  heart.  But  this  is  what  tradition  has  done  for  us : 
it  has  shifted  the  emphasis  in  Hamlet  from  the  royal  family 
to  an  extraneous  group,  to  the  family  of  Polonius  as  their 
orbits  are  perturbed  by  the  erratic  hero,  a  prince  out  of 
their  star. 

Hamlet  is  a  family  tragedy.  It  is  first  of  all  the  tragedy 
of  the  reigning  house  in  Denmark.  Only  incidentally  do 
they  engulf  their  dependents  and  courtiers — Rosencrantz 
and  Guildenstern,  Polonius  and  his  children,  and  Horatio, 
left  friendless  and  alone  to  tell  the  story  right.  This  is  the 
tragedy  that  Shakespeare  drew  and  one  to  which  I  hope 
some  day  a  company  of  intelligent  actors  will  return. 

II 

Of  all  the  tragedies  Hamlet  is  the  richest  in  what  we  now- 
adays call  local  color,  and  it  seems  as  if  Shakespeare,  how- 
ever he  got  his  information,  goes  out  of  his  way  to  paint 
vividly  the  Denmark  that  he  saw  in  his  mind.  Indeed,  writ- 
ing for  audiences  so  prejudiced  in  favor  of  regarding  all 
times  and  climes  as  if  they  were  colonies  of  Elizabethan 
England,  it  would  seem  as  though  Shakespeare,  who,  as  a 
great  practical  dramatist,  had  his  ear  to  the  ground,  would 
not  have  put  in  so  much  that  was  strange  and  foreign  to  his 
hearers  if  he  did  not  have  a  dramatic  purpose  in  view. 

Denmark  is,  to  Shakespeare,  a  military  nation  as  the  king 
tells  us  in  a  speech  from  the  throne.  The  play  opens  with 
soldiers  doing  sentry  duty  as  though  it  were  war-time,  and 
indeed,  war  is  threatening  with  Fortinbras,  and  nobody 
knows  what  may  happen.  The  sentinels  are  on  the  qui  vive : 
in  the  very  opening  lines  we  find  that  when  Bernardo  chal- 
lenges Francisco  (itself  a  reversal  of  military  procedure), 
the  latter  (who  has  not  seen  the  ghost  and  apparently  knows 
nothing  about  it)  will  not  respond  save  by  another  chal- 
lenge, which  in  a  sense  he  repeats  by  inquiring  suspiciously 
if  this  be  Bernardo  or  no.     And  the  scene,  as  if  to  mark  the 


12  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

martial  tenor  of  the  play,  is  not  the  castle  of  Elsinore,  but 
one  of  the  fortifications  around  it,  a  platform  on  an  inac- 
cessible cliff 

"That  beetles  o'dr  his  base  into  the  sea." 

(I,  iv,  71) 

This  was  necessitated  by  the  exigencies  of  the  Elizabethan 
stage. 

"Elsinore.     A   platform  before   the   castle,   Francisco   at   his 
post.     Enter  to  him  Bernardo. 
Bernardo.     Who's  there? 

Francisco.     Nay,  answer  me:   stand,  and  unfold  yourself." 

(I,  i,  1-2) 

Then  Bernardo  gives  the  usual  reply  (like  our  "Who  goes 
there?  A  friend"),  but  even  this  does  not  satisfy  the  sus- 
picious Francisco: 

"Bernardo.     Long  live  the  king! 
Francisco.     Bernardo? 
Bernardo.     He." 


(I,  i,  3-5) 


To  v^hich  Francisco  responds: 


"You  come  most  carefully  upon  your  hour," 

(I,  i,  6) 

a  strange  response  if  Francisco  is  expecting  Bernardo  to 
relieve  him,  as  the  following  dialog  shows.  In  a  well  dis- 
ciplined military  establishment  like  Elsinore  promptness 
should  occasion  no  remark.  Why  does  Francisco  speak  of 
it?  Indeed,  why  is  Bernardo  almost  over-prompt  in  his 
coming  so  as  to  draw  this  comment  from  the  rival  of  his 
watch,  a  veteran  accustomed  to  discipline,  except  that  Den- 
mark is  threatened  with  war,  ghosts  are  walking,  and  mar- 
tial ardor  prevails,  with  not  a  little  martial  nervousness  ? 

A  little  later  Marcellus,  who  seems  to  be  a  young  recruit 
and  not,  as  it  were,  in  the  military  councils,  gives  us  a 
most  graphic  account  of  the  haste  and  urgency  of  the  Danish 


The  King  in  Hamlet  13 

war  preparations,  to  which  we  shall  have  by  and  by  to  re- 
turn. Horatio,  in  a  long  speech  full  of  jejune  legal  phrases, 
recounts  the  threatened  embroilment  with  Norway,  the  issue 
of  which  nobody  can  tell.  The  situation  is  delicate :  it  is  not 
unlike  the  D'Annunzio  adventure  in  Fiume,  and  it  is  a  situa- 
tion that  obviously  calls  for  great  tact  and  skill  in  state- 
craft : 

"young  Fortinbras, 
Of  unimproved  metal  hot  and  full, 
Hath  in  the  skirts  of  Norway  here  and  there 
Shark'd  up  a  list  of  lawless  resolutes, 
For  food  and  diet,  to  some  enterprise 
...  to  recover  of  us,  by  strong  hand 
And  terms  compulsatory,  those  foresaid  lands 
...  by  his  father  lost." 

(I,  i,  95-104) 

*That  is  why  conditions  are  unusual  in  the  castle  : 

"this,  I  take  it, 
Is  the  main  motive  of  our  preparations, 
The  source  of  this  our  watch;" 

(I,  i,   104-106) 

and  in  the  nation  as  a  whole: 

"and  the  chief  head 
Of  this  post-haste  and  romage  in  the  land." 

(I,  i,  106-107) 

Norway  has  her  terra  irredenta,  and  it  behooves  Denmark 
to  move  carefully  if  she  is  to  avoid  a  quarrel. 

Into  this  atmosphere  of  highly-strung  uncertainty  comes 
now  the  ghost.  Let  us,  if  we  can,  try  to  rid  ourselves  of 
our  prepossessions  at  this  point,  and  forget  that  we  know 
why  the  ghost  walks.  If  the  play  were  new  to  us,  if  the 
ghost  were  as  inexplicable  to  our  blase  minds  as  it  is  to  Mar- 
cellus  and  Bernardo  and  Horatio,  we  should  see  that  Shake- 
speare is  again  bringing  before  us  what  only  our  long  famil- 
iarity with  the  play  forbids  us  seeing,  namely,  the  perilous 
position  of  Denmark ;  and  at  the  same  time  he  is  providing 


14  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

us  with  a  dramatic  "surprise"  of  unfailing  success,  when  we 
discover  later  that  the  reason  why  the  ghost  walks  is  some- 
thing startlingly  new^  in  the  play,  and  quite  different  from 
the  plausible  and  erroneous  reason  he  so  dexterously  dangles 
before  us. 

We  first  hear  of  the  ghost  from  Marcellus,  who  makes  no 
guess  at  the  cause  of  its  appearance.  This  is  not  surprising 
because  we  have  already  seen  that  Marcellus  is  a  new  recruit, 
unfamiliar  with  even  the  current  gossip  as  to  the  Norwegian 
situation.  But  Horatio,  who  is  a  "scholar,"  explains  the 
threatening  war;  he  realizes  the  perilous  position  of  the 
state;  and  it  is  he  who  jumps  to  the  not  unnatural  conclu- 
sion that  the  appearance  of  the  dead  Hamlet  is  due  to  the 
uncertainty  of  the  political  situation.     It  bodes,  he  says, 

"some  strange  eruption  to  our  state." 

(I,  i,  69)  « 

and  it  reminds  him  of  other  troubled  times;  a  scholar  of 
the  Renaissance,  he  has  Roman  history  at  his  fingers'  ends, 
and  he  draws  a  parallel : 

"In  the  most  high  and  palmy  state  of  Rome, 
A  little  ere  the  mightiest  Julius  fell, 
The  graves  stood  tenantless,  and  the  sheeted  dead 
Did  squeak  and  gibber  in  the  Roman  streets:" 

(I,  i,  113-116) 

then  perhaps  something  is  lost  from  the  text,  and  the  speech 
concludes : 

"even  the  like  precurse  of  fierce  events.   .    . 
Have  heaven  and  earth  together  demonstrated 
Unto  our  climatures  and  countrymen." 

(I,  i,  121-125) 

Bernardo,  an  older  and  more  experienced  soldier  than  Mar- 
cellus, has  reached  a  similar  conclusion  on  independent  lines, 
for  we  must  not  imagine  that  he  has  listened  very  attentively 
to  Horatio,  or  that  the  information  is  new  to  him.  When 
Horatio  has  finished  his  lesson  to  the  admiring  Marcellus, 
Bernardo  remarks: 


The  King  in  Hamlet  15 

"Well  may  it  sort  that  this  portentous  figure 
Comes  armed  through  our  watch ;  so  like  the  king 
That  was  and  is  the  question  of  these  wars." 

(I,  i,  109-111) 

When  he  saw  the  ghost  Bernardo's  mind  was  running  on  the 
king  as  a  mihtary  figure,  for  he  exclaimed : 

"In  the  same  figure,  like  the  king  that's  dead," 

(I,  i,  41) 

and  in  his  following  speech : 

"Looks  it  not  like  the  king?" 


(I,  i,  43) 


Horatio  adds  later : 


"Such  was  the  very  armour  he  had  on 
When  he  the  ambitious"  Norway  combated; 
So  frown'd  he  once,  when,  in  an  angry  parle, 
He  smote  the  sledded  Polacks  on  the  ice;" 

(I,  i,  60-63) 

and  Marcellus  tell  us  that  he  walks 

"With  martial   stalk." 

(I,  i,  ^Q) 

Was  it  not  currently  reported  in  France  that  Joan  of  Arc 
returned  in  armor  to  lead  her  soldiers  against  Germany? 
The  elder  Hamlet  is  the  hero-soldier  of  the  Danes.  We 
have  his  picture : 

"that  fair  and  war-like  form 
In  which  the  majesty  of  buried  Denmark 
Did  sometimes  march." 

(I,  i,  47-49) 

He  is  *'our  valiant  Hamlet,"  "a  goodly  king" ;  he  has  beaten 
old  Fortinbras  in  single  combat,  and  taught  the  fear  of  Den- 
mark to  his  successor,  as  Voltimand's  speech  (II,  ii,  60-79) 
plainly  shows,  and  of  course  his  best  tribute  is  the  reverence 


16  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

and  affection  of  his  son.  If  the  ghost  of  such  a  one  re- 
turns to  earth,  the  state  must  be  indeed  in  danger,  and  so 
Horatio,  in  the  midst  of  his  formal  exorcism,  anxiously  ad- 
jures him : 

"If  thou  art  privy  to  thy  country's  fate, 
Which,  happily,  foreknowing  may  avoid, 
0,  speak!" 

(I,  i,  133-135) 

Only  when  he  receives  no  answer  does  he  go  on  to  the  more 
commonplace  explanation  that  the  ghost  has  buried  treasure 
to  guard — a  part  of  the  formal  ghost-lore  of  the  times,  and  in 
no  sense  a  reflection  on  the  elder  Hamlet's  character. 

Even  the  young  prince,  who  is  almost  ludicrously  ignorant 
of  state  affairs  and  who  at  no  time  displays  the  slightest  in- 
terest in,  or  knowledge  of,  government,  even  young  Hamlet 
is  impressed  by  the  general  uncertainty.^  We  must  not  forget 
that,  though  he  may  be  suspicious  ("my  prophetic  soul!"), 
he  has,  so  far,  not  the  slightest  intimation  of  the  manner  of 
his  father's  death ;  with  egoistic  moodiness  he  objects  to  the 
bad  taste  of  the  hurried  wedding,  the  possible  theological 
complications  involved,^  and  the  implied  lack  of  affection  on 
his  mother's  part — "a  little  more  than  kin  and  less  than 
kind,"  so  to  speak,  "within  a  month  .  .  .  she  married."^ 
When  Hamlet  is  told  about  the  ghost  and  learns  that  it  is 
an  armed  figure,  he  is  very  much  puzzled.  He  asks  directly 
whether  they  are  not  mistaken,  cross-examining  the  wit- 
nesses like  a  lawyer: 

"Hamlet.     Arm'd,  say  you? 
Marcellus.'] 

Hamlet.     From  top  to  toe? 

]\^aTcellus  "1 

Bernardo',  f  ^^  1°^^'  ^^^"^  ^^^^  ^^  ^°^*- 


lit  is  for  this  reason  that  he  is  able  to  cloak  his  real  purposes  under  the  ambig- 
uous,  but   to    his    friends,    natural 

"The  time  is   out  of   joint." 

(I,  V,  189) 
2See  below  p.  65  ff. 
SI,  ii,   145-151 


The  King  in  Hamlet  17 

Hamlet.  Then  saw  you  not  his  face? 

Horatio.  O,  yes,  my  lord;  he  wore  his  beaver  up. 

Hamlet.  What,  look'd  he  frowningly? 

Horatio.  A  countenance  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger.* 

Hamlet.  Pale,  or  red? 

Horatio.  Nay,  very  pale," 

(I,  ii,  226-233) 

with  much  more,  and  it  is  evident  that  Marcellus  and  Ber- 
nardo do  not  like  the  implied  reflection  on  their  veracity. 
Now,  Hamlet  may  not  know  exactly  in  what  costume  his 
father  died,  but  a  man  sleeping  in  his  orchard  is  not  likely 
to  rest  comfortably  in 


'the  mediaeval  grace 


Of  iron  clothing. 


In  other  words,  when  the  ghost  died,  he  had  no  armor  on, 
something  that  Hamlet  either  knows  or  can  very  well  guess, 
and  as  it  is  the  convention  for  ghosts  to  walk  in  the  costume 
in  which  they  were  murdered,  Hamlet's  first  conclusion 
that  his  father  was  the  victim  of  foul  play,  is  cleverly  thrown 
awry. 5  So  perforce  he  falls  back  upon  the  other  explana- 
tion :  if  his  father  has  returned  because  of  the  extremity  of 
the  Norwegian  situation,  if  he  has  returned,  in  other  words, 
as  a  warrior-king,  he  not  only  may,  but  must,  come 

"Armed  at  point  exactly,  cap-a-pe." 

(I,  ii,   200) 

As  the  embodiment  of  martial  spirit,  he  will  look  "frown- 
ingly" and  "red,"  and  Hamlet  is  the  more  puzzled  when  he 
finds  that  the  hero-warrior  presented 


^Inasmuch  as  Horatio  has  explicitly  informed  us  of  the  ghost  that  "so  frown'd 
he  once,"  we  must  suppose  that  this  statement  represents  his  second  judgment. 
It  does  not  altogether  contradict  his  first  description,  but  is  certainly  a  serioTOS 
modification   of   it. 

^The  ghost  afterwards  appears  "in  his  habit  as  he  lived"  (III,  iv,  135).  The 
device  of  the  armor  having  served  its  purpose  to  mislead  Hamlet — and  the  au- 
dience,— Shakespeare  abandons  it  in  favor  of  "everyday  clothes"  confirmatory  of 
the  assassination,  and  that  at  a  time  when  his  mother's  astonishment  might  trouble 
Hamlet's   belief  in  the  spirit. 


18  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"A  countenance  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger." 

(I,  ii,  231) 

Yet  it  occurs  to  him  that  a  king  brooding  over  his  country's 
fate  will  be  sorrowful  rather  than  angered,  so  that  perhaps 
the  explanation  of  Horatio  and  his  comrades  is  correct.  For 
when  Hamlet's  friends  have  gone,  the  prince's  first  thought 
is  of  the  armor : 


"My  father's  spirit  in  arms!" 
and  of  its  meaning: 


(I,  ii,  254) 


"All  is  not  well; 
I  doubt  some  foul  play:  would  the  night  were  come! 
Till  then  sit  still,  my  soul:  foul  deeds  will  rise. 
Though  all  the  earth  overwhelm  them,  to  men's  eyes." 

(I,  ii,  254-257) 

We  forget  that,  to  one  who  had  never  read  Hamlet,  this 
statement  is  ambiguous  and,  as  it  were,  misleading :  it  fits 
in  with  what  we  know  of  the  murder;  but  it  also  chimes 
with  Marcellus's  naive  remark : 

"Something  is  rotten  in  the  state  of  Denmark," 

(I,  iv,  90) 

the  last  thing  we  hear  about  the  ghost  before  Hamlet's  inter- 
view. Some  public  calamity  overshadows  the  nation,  as  in- 
deed is  true  but  in  a  different  sense  from  Marcellus'.  How 
carefully  Hamlet  and  Horatio  keep  their  secret  and  how,  if 
the  ghost  story  leaked  out  as  such  stories  do,  the  Marcellus 
explanation  became  the  current  one,  is  shown  in  the  very 
last  of  the  play  when,  the  king  being  stabbed,  the  affrighted 
courtiers  cry  out  (to  their  own  detriment  should  young  Ham- 
let live  and  become  king) ,  'Treason !  treason !"  I  dare  say 
a  tradition  lingered  long  in  Elsinore  that  old  Hamlet,  fore- 
seeing that  his  crazed  son  would  stab  God's  anointed,  re- 
turned to  earth  to  prevent  the  crime  and  failed ;  for  I  do  not 
suppose  that  Horatio's  explanation    (delivered  under  the 


The  King  in  Hamlet  19 

armed  protection  of  that  hated  foreigner,  Fortinbras)  was 
unanimously  adopted,  any  more  than  I  suppose  we  shall  ever 
agree  on  the  right  and  wrong  of  the  murder  of  the  Due 
d'Enghien.     But  let  us  return  to  the  play. 

When  Hamlet  first  sees  the  ghost  it  is  the  warrior-king 
theory  that  he  has  in  mind.  He  addresses  the  spectre  first 
of  all  by  his  name,  as  anyone  would  naturally  do,  and  im- 
mediately afterwards  thinks  of  him  in  his  political  capacity : 

"King,  father,  royal  Dane!" 

(I,  iv,  45) 

that  is,  head  of  the  state  and  of  Hamlet's  family.  For  the 
prince  says  to  Horatio,  who  has  so  far  broken  all  court 
etiquette  as  to  lay  hands  on  Hamlet's  sacred  person : 

"My  fate  cries  out," 

(I,  iv,  81) 

that  is,  Hamlet's  destiny  as  king  of  which,  after  his  uncle's 
promise,  he  expects  to  hear;  and  one  so  negligent  in  state- 
craft as  he,  may  well  fear  the  reproaches  of  his  father's 
ghost. 

And  a  little  later  Hamlet,  alone  with  the  ghost,  again  re- 
fers to  the  puzzling  problem  of  the  armor : 

"thou,  dead  corse,  again  in  complete  steel," 

(I,  iv,  52) 

which  I  should  punctuate  as  I  have  written  it,  and  not  with 
a  comma  after  again,  so  as  to  make  it  modify  the  revisfst 
of  the  next  line.  I  think  Hamlet  is  struck,  as  Shakespeare 
meant  him  to  be,  by  the  fact  of  the  ghost's  being  in  arms, 
and  Hamlet,  as  a  wit  and  a  scholar,  is  saved  from  the  re- 
dundancy, again  revisit.  All  this,  as  I  read  the  play,  is 
Shakespeare's  device  for  whetting  the  uncertainty  of  his 
audience,  and  his  way  of  telling  us  at  the  same  time  of  the 
dangerous  political  situation  in  Denmark.  Into  the  error 
that  old  Hamlet  has  returned  to  save  the  state,  everyone 
falls  so  that  the  revelation  of  the  ghost  comes  as  a  fearful 
shock  even  to  young  Hamlet.     It  is  true,  he  dislikes  his 


20  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

uncle,  but  none  of  us  likes  to  think  of  even  his  most  bore- 
some  relative  as  a  red-handed  murderer. 

The  relation  of  Denmark  to  its  conquest,  Norway,  is  then 
extremely  grave,  nor  is  this  all.  We  are  also  informed,  ac- 
cording to  the  accepted  rendering,  that  there  has  been 
trouble  in  Poland  in  the  late  king's  time,  who 

"smote  the  sledded  Polacks  on  the  ice." 

(I,  i,  63) 

A  little  later  in  the  play  young  Fortinbras  attempts  to  trick 
Denmark  into  an  attitude  of  "benevolent  neutrality"  that 
would  inevitably  draw  that  state  into  a  second  Polish  war. 
He  has  got  his  uncle  to  request  permission,  through  Volti- 
mand,  for  his  troops  to  traverse  Danish  ground  on  their  way 
to  Poland :  obviously  the  easiest  and  safest  way  for  the  expe- 
dition, as  a  glance  at  an  appropriate  map  will  show.  Volti- 
mand  brings  back 

"entreaty.    .    . 
That  it  might  please  you  to  give  quiet  pass 
Through  your  dominions  for  this  enterprise, 
On  such  regards  of  safety  and  allowance 
As  therein  are  set  down." 

(II,  ii,  76-80) 

One  is  reminded  of  the  ex-Kaiser's  request  to  Belgium. 
King  Claudius  meets  the  situation  ably:  he  announces  his 
favorable  disposition  (''It  likes  us  well")?  but  the  matter  is 
too  grave  for  a  quick  decision  and  he  wisely  postpones  an 
answer : 

" .      .      .     at  our  more  consider'd  time  we'll  read, 
Answer,  and  think  upon  this  business." 

(II,  ii,  81-82) 

Claudius  may  be  a  murderer,  but  he  is  no  fool :  indeed,  as 
I  hope  to  show,  he  is  precisely  the  type  of  king  Denmark 
needs,  and  his  wise  delay  bears  fruit.  For  when  we  first 
see  young  Fortinbras  (Act  IV,  scene  iv),  he  is,  after  the 
manner  of  condottieri,  marching  impudently  through  Danish 


The  King  in  Hamlet  21 

territory,  but  he  finds  himself  sufficiently  embarrassed  for 
want  of  the  needed  permit,  to  send  a  captain  back  after  one. 

"If  that  his  majesty  would  aught  with  us," 

I      exclaims  this  royal  adventurer, 

"We  shall  express  our  duty  in  his  eye, 
7  And  let  him  know  so," 

(IV,  iv,  5-7) 

prefacing  his  command  with  the  brazen  assurance: 

"Fortinbras 
Craves  the  conveyance  of  a  promised  march 
Over  his  kingdom." 

(IV,  iv,  2-4) 

So  far  as  we  know  Claudius  never  promised  anything  of  the 
kind.  But  the  general  belligerency  of  Fortinbras's  attitude 
is  the  excuse  for  the  lie,  an  attitude  that  is  sufficient  com- 
ment on  the  peril  of  the  situation.  Denmark  must  steer 
carefully  not  to  offend  either  Poland  or  Fortinbras. 

The  desperate  game  that  Claudius  is  forced  to  play  is 
further  complicated  by  the  problem  of  the  Danish  succession. 
Fortinbras  has  his  eye  on  the  Danish  throne.  Claudius  is 
striving  to  prevent  precisely  what  Hamlet,  who  has  no 
knowledge  of  statecraft,  goes  out  of  his  way  to  bring  about — 

"I  do  prophesy  the  election  lights 
On  Fortinbras:  he  has  my  dying  voice," 

(V,  ii,  347-348) 

How  ignorant  Hamlet  is  of  the  situation,  and  how  delicate 
is  the  diplomatic  give  and  take  is  sufficiently  to  be  remarked 
by  his  naive  observations  about  the  "little  patch  of  ground" 
which  the  captain,  a  professional  soldier  of  the  Renaissance 
type,  who  has  no  patriotism  and  who  will  fight  for  anybody 
so  long  as  the  pay  be  regular  and  the  plunder  good,®  naturally 


^Fortinbras's    expedition    has    an    annual    financial    backing : 
".      .      .     old    Norway,    overcome    with    joy, 
Gives   him   three   thousand   crowns  in  annual  fee 
And  his  commission  to  employ  those  soldiers, 
.     against   the   Polack." 

(II,    ii    72-75) 


22  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

and  cynically  disparages.  Hamlet  takes  the  captain's  ironic 
description  at  its  face  value : 

"Truly  to  speak,  and  with  no  addition, 
We  have  to  gain  a  little  patch  of  ground 
That  hath  in  it  no  profit  but  the  name. 
To  pay  five  ducats,  five,  I  would  not  farm  it ; 
Nor  will  it  yield  to  Norway  or  the  Pole 
A  ranker  rate,  should  it  be  sold  in  fee." 

(IV,  iv,  17-22) 

In  popular  parlance  the  captain  is  "sore"  because  he  sees 
no  chance  for  loot.     Hamlet  ingenuously  responds : 

"Why,  then  the  Polack  never  will  defend  it." 

(IV,  iv,  23) 

This  remark  amuses  the  captain,  who  dryly  tells  him  it  is 
already  garrisoned,  whereupon  Hamlet,  who  will  not  suff-er 
anybody  to  contradict  him,  continues  in  his  lofty  way  : 

"Two  thousand  souls  and  twenty  thousand  ducats 
Will  not  debate  the  question  of  this  straw: 
This  is  the  imposthume  of  much  wealth  and  peace, 
That  inward  breaks,  and  shows  no  cause  without 
Why  the  man  dies." 

(IV,  iv,  25-29) 

As  a  comment  on  secret  diplomacy  this  is  almost  funny,  and 
coming  from  the  future  ruler  of  Denmark,  it  argues  an 
amazing  ignorance  of  foreign  aifairs,  But  Hamlet  con- 
cludes in  his  lordly  manner : 

"I  humbly  thank  you,  sir," 

(IV,   iv,  29) 

and  the  astonished  captain,  having  been  read  this  lesson  in 
the  stupidity  with  which  states  are  governed,  responds  with 
mock  courtesy  and  sardonic  significance, 

"God  be  wi'  you,  sir," 

(IV,   iv,  30) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  23 

and  goes  out,  I  assume,  to  have  his  laugh.  God  will  need  to 
be  with  Denmark  should  Hamlet  ever  become  king.  Then 
Rosencrantz  asks: 

"Wiirt  please  you  go,  my  lord?" 

(IV,  iv,  30) 

But  Hamlet  is  obstinate,  as  is  frequent  with  him,  and  stays. 
What  is  this  "little  patch  of  ground"  that  the  lordly  Ham- 
let, who  knows  so  little  about  statecraft,  thus  despises? 
Like  Helgoland  in  the  late  war,  it  possesses  an  importance 
altogether  out  of  proportion  to  its  merits,  and  it  is  partly  to 
deceive  Hamlet  that  the  captain  speaks  as  he  does.  It  is 
on  the  frontier.  Hamlet,  like  the  tyro  that  he  is,  asks 
whether  the  expedition  is  directed 

"against  the  main  of  Poland,  sir, 
Or  for  some  frontier;" 

(IV,  iv,  15-16) 

and  being  told  it  is  the  frontier,  concludes  that  the  expedi- 
tion is  both  pointless  and  fruitless.  But  in  war,  frontiers 
are  important,  and  this  patch  of  ground  fronts  Denmark 
as  we  know,  for  Fortinbras  is  to  reach  Poland  by  marching 
over  Danish  soil.  Wherever  it  is,  it  will  not  yield  ta  Norway 
or  to  Poland ;  and  it  is  an  admirable  position  for  watching 
Denmark — ^the  country  Fortinbras  has  his  eye  on  all  the 
time;  so  admirable,  indeed,  that  in  the  last  scene  of  this 
eventful  history  we  find  him  walking  into  the  Danish  capital, 
the  English  ambassadors  in  tow,  with  the  nonchalance  of  a 
gentleman  entering  his  front  door.^  More  than  Hamlet — 
Denmark  itself  has  fallen. 

It  is  usually  assumed  that  Fortinbras  has  some  rights  to 


'Horatio's  astonishment  at   the   "coincidence"   of  Fortinbras'^s   arrival  with  the   fall 
of  the  Danish  royal  house  is   naive,  but  characteristic : 

".      .      .so  jump  upon  this  bloody  question. 
You  from  the  Polack  wars,  and  you  from  England 
Are  here   arrived,   give   order  that  these  bodies 
High    on    a    stage    be    placed    to    the    view." 

(V,  ii,  367-370) 
Instinctively  he  turns  to  someone  else   for  orders. 


24  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

the  Danish  crown,  partly  because  of  the  dying  Hamlet's 
speech,  but  mainly  because  Fortinbras  says  so : 

"I  have  some  rights  of  memory  in  this  kingdom." 

(V,  ii,  381) 

But  I  have  searched  both  the  play  and  the  sources  in  vain 
to  find  what  this  right  may  be.  That  Fortinbras  has  some 
right  to  the  crown  of  Norway,  which  his  father,  in  a  roman- 
tic and  impracticable  manner, 

"Thereto  prick'd  on  by  a  most  emulate  pride," 

(I,  i,  83) 

SO  strangely  forfeited,  may  be  true :  Fortinbras's  uncle,  how- 
ever, like  Hamlet's,  is  on  the  throne,  we  do  not  know  why. 
But  the  crown  of  Norway  is  not  the  crown  of  Denmark. 
Fortinbras  has  not  the  slightest  shadow  of  a  right  to  the 
Danish  crown  except  the  right  of  the  strongest.  Like 
Frederick  the  Great  when  he  stole  Silesia,  Fortinbras  be- 
lieves in  action  first  and  explanation  afterward,  and  having 
with  all  his  forces  captured  Elsinore,  he  announces  his 
"right"  entirely  in  the  cool  manner  of  other  robber  cd|)tains. 
Like  Frederick  he  is  safely  vague  as  to  the  nature  of  these 
"rights"— they  are  merely  "of  memory,"  and  like  Frederick, 
perhaps,  he  will  set  his  lawmen  to  making  out  a  legal  claim 
later.  A  moment  after,  indeed,  he  gives  the  whole  thing 
away:  in  invading  Denmark,  as  he  bluntly  remarks,  he 
comes  because  his  "vantage"  invites  him  to  put  in  a  claim 
for  the  crown.  In  good  set  terms,  he  watched  his  oppor- 
tunity and  seized  it.  Denmark  has  been,  it  is  true,  an  elective 
monarchy.^  But  with  a  Norse  garrison  in  the  capital,  a  dis- 
play of  military  force  the  first  act  of  Fortinbras's  occupa- 
tion^  the  royal  dynasty  extinct,  the  melodramatic  tale  of 
Horatio  to  show  up  the  rottenness  of  the  late  family,  and  a 
return  to  the  good  old  custom  of  the  election  as  a  popular 

sSee  p.  62  fE. 

oNote   the   four    captains,    the    dead   march,    the    "rites    of    war"    with    their   oppor- 
tunity  for   display,   and  the   final   injunction: 
"Go,  bid  the  soldiers  shoot." 

(V,  ii,  395) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  25 

cry,  Fortinbras  is  entirely  secure  in  his  new  possession. 
He  will,  it  is  true,  scrupulously  adhere  to  the  forms  of  suc- 
cession : 

".     .     .     call  the  noblest  to  the  audience," 

(V,  ii,  379) 

he  will  display  a  punctilious  respect  for  the  last  prince  of 
the  house  of  Hamlet : 

"Let  four  captains 
Bear  Hamlet,  like  a  soldier,  to  the  stage; 
....   for  his  passage, 
The  soldiers'  music  and  the  rites  of  war 
Speak  loudly  for  him," 

(V,  ii,  387-392) 

a  convenient  combination  of  force  and  flattery;  and  he  is 
most  anxious  to  speak  well  of  the  young  prince : 

".    .    .he  was  likely,  had  he  been  put  on. 
To  have  proved  most  royally," 

(V,  ii,  389-390) 

a  generalization  that  will  please  the  Danes,  and  means  noth- 
ing. Fortinbras'  succession  is,  nevertheless,  fundamentally 
a  matter  of  force,  and  the  Danes,  though  they  do  not  want 
him,  must  take  him.  The  hollowness  of  the  election  law  is 
evident — something  we  must  bear  in  mind. 

It  is  to  prevent  all  this  that  Claudius  has  been  working. 
He  knows  that  the  Danes  want  a  Danish  king.  Hamlet  is 
popular,  he  says,  for  the  sole  reason  that,  following  Clau- 
dius's announcement,  he  is  known  to  be  the  successor  to  the 
throne : 

"He's  loved  of  the  distracted  multitude, 
Who  like  not  in  their  judgement,  but  their  eyes," 

(IV,  iii,  4-5) 

at  once  a  shrewd  judgment  of  Hamlet  and  the  nation.  It  is 
on  Hamlet  that  popular  hope  is  fixed :    is  he  not 

"The  expectancy  and  rose  of  the  fair  state," 

(III,  i,  152) 


26  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

as  even  the  simple-minded  Ophelia  knows?     Claudius  tells, 
Laertes  of 

"...   the  great  love  the  general  gender  bear  him; 
Who,  dipping  all  his  faults  in  their  affection, 
Would,  like  the  spring  that  turneth  wood  to  stone, 
Convert  his  gyves  to  graces." 

(IV,  vii,  18-21) 

The  anxiety  of  the  king  is  first  of  all  to  make  Hamlet  a 
sagacious  and  competent  ruler,  and  he  directly  reminds  him 
of  his  duties  as  heir  apparent: 

"You  are  the  most  immediate  to  our  throne, 
.    .    .   For  your  intent 
In  going  back  to  school  in  Wittenberg, 

It  is  most  retrograde  to  our  desire."  -^ 

(I,  ii,  109;  112-114)  V 

When  Hamlet  reluctantly  consents  to  remain  at  Elsinore, 
the  king  is  happy : 

"Why,  'tis  a  loving  and  a  fair  reply: 
Be  as  ourself  in  Denmark.    .    . 
This  gentle  and  unforced  accord  of  Hamlet 
Sits  smiling  to  my  heart." 

(I,  ii,  121-124)  ■ 

People  have  ignored,  it  seems  to  me,  the  gravity  of  the 
general  interest  in  Hamlet's  marriage.  If  he  be  not  mar- 
ried, the  royal  line  will  become  extinct.  His  marriage  is  a 
question  of  state.     Says  Laertes : 

"His  greatness  weigh'd,  his  will  is  not  his  own; 
For  he  himself  is  subject  to  his  birth: 
He  may  not,  as  unvalued  persons  do. 
Carve  for  himself;  for  on  his  choice  depends 
The  safety  and  [the]  health  of  this  whole  state; 
And  therefore  must  his  choice  be  circumscribed 
Unto  the  voice  and  yielding  of  that  body, 
Whereof  he  is  the  head." 

(I,  iii,  17-24) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  27 

If  he  loves  Ophelia,  Laertes  thinks  it  can  be 

"no  further 
Than  the  main  voice  of  Denmark  goes  withal." 

(I,  iii,  27-28) 

But  when  it  seems  that  Hamlet's  is,  indeed,  a  grand  passion, 
Ophelia's  family  sings  a  different  tune :  Polonius  hurries  to 
the  king,  for  if  Ophelia  becomes  queen  in  Denmark,  it  will 
be  a  great  day  for  him — something  he  had  overlooked : 

"By  heaven,  it  is  as  proper  to  our  age 
To  cast  beyond  ourselves  in  our  opinions 
As  it  is  common  for  the  younger  sort 
To  lack  discretion." 

(II,  i,   114-117) 

And  that  Hamlet  may  be  mad  for  Ophelia  seems  to  the  queen 
so  happy  and  so  convenient  an  event  that  when  Polonius 
reads  the  letter  he  has  had  from  his  daughter,  Gertrude 
cries  out: 

"Came  this  from  Hamlet  to  her?" 

(II,  ii,  113) 

Polonius,  before  proceeding  with  the  matter,  craftily  as- 
sures himself  of  the  matrimonial  rating  of  his  family  at 
court,  later  protesting,  of  course,  his  entire  disinterested- 
ness : 

"Polonius.     What  do  you  think  of  me? 
King.     As  of  a  man  faithful  and  honorable. 
Polonius.     I  would  fain  prove  so." 

(II,  ii,  128-130) 

The  Polonius  family  is  popular  with  the  multitude  as  a  relic 
of  the  "good  old  days" :  witness  the  Laertes  tumult.  So  the 
royal  family  agrees  that  Ophelia  will  make  an  excellent  wife 
for  Hamlet. 

"I  do  wish," 

says  Gertrude  to  Ophelia, 


28  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"That  your  good  beauties  be  the  happy  cause 
Of  Hamlet's  wildness:  so  shall  I  hope  your  virtues 
Will  bring  him  to  his  wonted  way  again, 
To  both  your  honours," 

(III,  i,  38-42) 

a  strong  hint  which  carries  Ophelia  so  high  into  the  clouds 
(does  she  not  practically  woo  Hamlet  in  the  beginning  of 
that  famous  scene?)  that  Hamlet's  treatment  of  her  comes 
as  a  dreadful  smash,  and  her  first  thought  afterward  is  of 
Hamlet  and  the  position  she  has  lost  through  his  "madness" : 

"O,  what  a  noble  mind  is  here  o'erthrown! 
The  courtier's,  soldier's,  scholar's,  eye,  tongue,  sword: 
The  expectancy  a«id  rose  of  the  fair  state, 
The  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form, 
The  observed  of  all  observers,  quite,  quite  down! 
And  I,  of  ladies  most  deject  and  wretched. 
That  suck'd  the  honey  of  his  music  vows. 
Now  see  that  noble  and  most  sovereign  reason. 
Like  sweet  bells  jangled,  out  of  tune,  and  harsh." 

(Ill,  i,  150-158) 

Ophelia  loves  Hamlet  sincerely,  and  this  is  some  of  the  love- 
liest poetry  in  Shakespeare;  all  of  which  does  not  conceal 
Ophelia's  natural  interest  in  being  crown  princess,  or  pre- 
vent her  politic  father  from  endeavoring  to  keep  alive  the 
dying  cause. . 

"It  shall  do  well," 

he  says  of  the  king's  determination  to  send  Hamlet  away, 

"but  yet  I  do  believe 
The  origin  and  commencement  of  his  grief 
Sprung  from  neglected  love," 

(III,  i,  176-178) 

and  craftily  suggests  that  the  queen  interview  Hamlet: 
boys  confess  love  affairs  to  their  mothers ;  and  also  (in  order, 
of  course,  to  promote  the  fortunes  of  the  family) ,  that  he 

"be  placed,  so  please  you,  in  the  ear 
Of  all  their  conference" 

(III,  i,  184-185) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  29 

and  comes  to  his  death,  entangled  in  a  double  sense  in  this 
family  tragedy.  Ophelia's  madness  is  mentioned  by  the 
king  among  the  other  cares  of  state  that 

"come  not  single  spies, 
But  in  battalions," 

(IV,  V,  75-76) 

and  cause  popular  unrest — something  it  would  not  do,  I 
think,  if  she  had  not  been  talked  of  as  a  future  queen ;  and 
when  she  is  dead,  the  queen  says  with  significant  emphasis : 

"I  hoped  thou  should'st  have  been  my  Hamlet's  wife; 
I  thought  thy  bride-bed  to  have  deck'd,  sweet  maid, 
-     And  not  have  strew'd  thy  grave." 

(V,  i,  238-240) 

The  most  eligible  lady  to  be  Hamlet's  wife,  and  so  to  con- 
tinue the  royal  line,  is  dead,  and  this  is  a  bad  thing  for  Den- 
mark. 

Thus  the  anxiety  of  the  king  and  queen  that  the  cause  of 
Hamlet's  ''madness"  be  discovered — indeed,  the  anxiety  of 
the  whole  court — Polonius,  Guildenstern,  Rosecrantz,  even 
Ophelia — and  of  the  nation  generally  (witness  the  grave- 
diggers),  is  an  anxiety  that,  though  it  springs  from  mixed 
motives,  springs  also  from  the  desire  of  the  people,  and  the 
necessity  of  the  court,  to  keep  a  Danish  prince  at  Elsinore. 

The  news  of  Hamlet's  "madness"  spreads  rapidly.  Even 
the  common  grave-diggers  are  thoroughly  conversant,  as 
they  think,  with  the  whole  matter.  They  know  why  he  was 
sent  to  England.  They  feel  furthermore  that  perhaps  his 
case  is  hopeless : 

"if  he  does  not  recover  his  wits/' 

says  the  First  Clown  in  effect,  and  the  wording  of  his  jest 
hints  at  popular  uneasiness.  The  king  does  his  best;  he  is 
extremely  patient  with  his  nephew ;  and  it  is  only  when  his 
own  royal  life  is  in  danger,  as  the  play  scene  and  the  death 
of  Polonius  tell  him,  that,  in  the  dangers  of  the  state,  and  as 
between  the  experienced  uncle  and  the  raw  hysterical,  and 


30  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

unpracticed  nephew,  he  reluctantly  decides  to  sacrifice  Ham- 
let. One  or  the  other  must  go,  and  Claudius  may  save  Den- 
mark, and  eventually — who  knows? — get  an  heir  to  the 
throne.  It  is,  if  you  will,  a  selfish  performance,  and  Clau- 
dius' motives,  like  all  human  motives,  are  mixed,  but  his 
action  is  a  considered  one,  and  in  view  of  Hamlet's  lack  of 
capacity  for  government,  may  well  be  for  the  good  of  Den- 
mark : 

"Madness  in  great  ones  must  not  unwatch'd  go." 

(Ill,  i,  188) 

In  the  meantime  the  popular  uneasiness  is  such  that 
Claudius  covers  up  the  news  of  the  intended  assassination, 
intending  to  present  the  people  with  a  fait  accompli,  or  per- 
haps slide  the  blame  on  England.  He  knows  his  peril. 
When  Laertes  bursts  in  upon  him,  he  calls  for  his  Swiss 
guard,  realizing  perhaps  that  the  Danish  troops  are  at  this 
juncture  not  to  be  relied  upon.  But  what  can  he  do?  Turn 
the  state  over  to  young  Hamlet  ?  Call  in  Fortinbras  ?  Con- 
fess? Or  save  himself — and  Denmark  with  him? 

For  it  is  not  without  meaning  that  Laertes'  tumult  is 
synchronous  with  Hamlet's  return  to  Denmark,  which  the 
sailors,  being  under  obligation  to  keep  it  secret,^<^  have  by 
their  very  mysteriousness  rendered  the  more  alarming.  The 
romantic  story  of  the  voyage,  the  seafight  and  the  escape, 
the  hints  and  innuendoes  about  Hamlet's  return,  distorted 
into  a  thousand  shapes,^^  have  multiplied  under  the  popular 
tongue  until  the  Danes,  ignorant  of  the  truth  but  fearing 
that  the  "mad"  Hamlet  will  never  be  king,  that  some  trick- 
ery is  afoot,  that  perhaps  they  have  been  sold  to  the  hated 
Norseman  Fortinbras,  whose  army  is  so  conveniently  near, 
are  beside  themselves  with  suspicion,  and  ripe  for  Laertes' 
appeals. 

Even  Hamlet  is  cognizant  of  the  general  uneasiness,  and 


^^They  will  not  mention  Hamlet's  name  even  to  Horatio,  calling  him  "the  am- 
bassador that  was  bound  for  England"    (IV,    vi,   9-10). 

"How  well  Hamlet  knows  the  leaks  in  a  court  intrimie,  witness  the  circumstantial 
oath  he  wrings  from  Marcellus  and  Horatio.      (I,   v,   169-181) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  31 

if  the  tumultuary  state  of  the  nation^^  breaks  in  upon  his 
ivory  tower,  it  must  indeed  be  stormy  sailing  for  the  ship  of 
state.  "The  age  is  grown  so  picked,"  he  complains  to  Hora- 
tio, apropos  of  the  grave-digger's  impudence,  "that  the  toe  of 
the  peasant  comes  so  near  the  heel  of  the  courtier,  he  galls 
his  kibe."  (V,  i,  136-137.)  The  aristocratic  prince  is  not 
fond  of  the  odor  of  democracy.  "How  long  hast  thou  been  a 
grave-digger?"  he  asks  in  an  effort  to  understand  the  yokel's 
disrespectful  treatment  of  a  gentleman,  and  the  answer  re- 
veals at  once  the  source  of  the  national  uneasiness,  and  the 
strong  national  pride :  "Of  all  the  days  i'  the  year  I  came 
to't  that  day  that  our  last  King  Hamlet  o'ercame  Fortin- 
bras."  (V,  i,  139-140).  It  is  the  son  of  this  same  Fortin- 
bras  that  now  threatens  Denmark.  Look  here  upon  this 
picture,  and  on  this:  "How  loiig  is  that  since?"  asks  Ham- 
let, and  the  clown,  surprised  at  this  ignorance,  which  is,  after 
all,  likefe these  toplofty  courtiers,  responds:  "Can  not  you 
tell  that  ?  every  fool  can  tell  that :  it  was  the  very  day  that 
young  Hamlet  was  born;  he  that  was  mad,  and  sent  into 
England,"  (V,  i,  142-144),  and  whose  recovery,  the  grave- 
digger  hints,  is  extremely  dubious. 

The  country  thus  deprived  of  its  expectancy  in  the  heir 
to  the  throne ;  the  people  keyed  up  to  a  high  pitch  of  nervous^- 
ness  as  a  result  of  threats  of  war  and  flooding  tales  of  all 
sorts — hints  of  treachery,  sudden  deaths,  seafights  with 
pirates  from  which  the  crown  prince  has  miraculously 
tescaped;^^  Claudius  now  under  suspicion:  comes  into  the 
situation  Laertes,  son  of  a  dear  father  murdered,  a  father 
who  was,  moreover,  a  counsellor  of  the  late  king,  killed  no 
one  knows  precisely  how  or  why,  Laertes  least  of  all.  The 
foreign  policy  of  Claudius  must  be  of  the  sort  that  can  not 
be  clear  to  the  people;  and  his  domestic  policy,  originally 
well  understood  and  approved,  has  become,  by  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances, dubious  and  crooked.  Laertes  arouses  the  mob. 


i2See  below  p.  36  ff. 

^^ Apparently   old  Hamlet  left  the  Danish  navy  in  bad  shape:   we  read  of 

"impress  of  shipwrights,  whose  sore  task 
Does  not   divide  the   Sunday  from  the  week." 

(I,   i,    75-76) 


32  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

The  popular  cry  goes  up,  "Denmark  for  the  Danes.  Laertes 
shall  be  king!"  which  means,  in  fine,  that  Hamlet  being,  as 
they  think,  out  of  the  question,  they  prefer  a  Dane  to  a  Nor- 
wegian. 

"You  false  Danish  dogs!" 

(IV,  V,  107) 

exclaims  the  queen  with  a  curious  insistence  upon  the  na- 
tionality of  the  rebels,  explicable  only  as  we  picture  the  state 
of  popular  feeling.  The  result  is  graphically  described  by 
a  terrified  courtier : 

"Save  yourself,  my  lord: 
The  ocean,  overpeering  of  his  list, 
Eats  not  the  flats  with  more  impetuous  haste 
Than  young  Laertes,  in  a  riotous  head, 
O'erbears  your  officers.     The  rabble  call  him  lord; 
And  as  the  world  were  now  but  to  begin, 
Antiquity  forgot,  customs  not  known, 
The  ratifiers  and  props  of  every  word, 
They  cry  'Choose  we;  Laertes  shall  be  king!' 
Caps,  hands  and  tongues  applaud  it  to  the  clouds. 
'Laertes  shall  be  king,  Laertes  king!'  " 

(IV,  V,  95-105) 

The  queen,  thinking  how  her  husband  has  labored  for  the 
good  of  Denmark,  how,  as  we  have  seen,  he  has  staved  off 
Norway,  exhausted  displomacy  to  avoid  an  im^broglio  with 
Poland  and  young  Fortinbras  (troubles  that  are  the  inher- 
itances of  the  last  reign)  ;  how  patient  he  has  been  with 
Hamlet,  putting,  as  the  death  of  Polonius  shows,  his  person 
and  his  policy  into  considerable  danger,  passes  over  Laertes 
as  though  he  did  not  exist,  and  cries  out  in  despairing  aston- 
ishment at  the  fickle  populace : 

"How  cheerfully  on  the  false  trail  they  cry! 
0,  this  is  counter." 

(IV,  V.  106-107) 

Not  a  word  of  Laertes  or  his  treachery!  This  wonderful 
woman  ignores  him,  to  concentrate  her  sorrow  and  her  scorn 
on  the  inability  of  the  people  to  see  what  the  whole  court 


The  King  in  Hamlet  33 

sees,  namely,  that  the  king  has  labored  throughout  for  the 
national  prosperity.  For  the  peril  lies  in  the  populace,  not 
in  Laertes,  who,  once  inside  the  castle,  instinctively  returns 
to  his  class  allegiance,  contemptuously  dismisses  the  people, 
and  presents  his  wrongs.  The  Danes,  terrified  by  their  own 
boldness,  and  by  the  stately  and  determined  presence  of 
Claudius,  hastily  retire,  and  that  monarch  calms  his  wife's 
fears  with  the  wise  command, 

"Let  him  go,  Gertrude." 

(IV,  V,  123) 

The  question  of  the  Danish  succession,  then,  is  grave,  but 
as  though  these  four  problems  were  not  enough,  Denmark 
confronts  a  fifth.  England,  another  conquest  of  old  Ham- 
let's, is  unruly.  How  or  when  the  question  first  comes  up  we 
do  not  know,  except  that,  like  the  Norwegian  affair,  it  fol- 
lows naturally  upon  a  change  of  kings  at  Elsinore.  We  first 
hear  of  it  incidentally  in  a  talk  of  the  king  with  his  right- 
hand  man,  Polonius :  the  tribute  money  has  not  been  forth- 
coming. (HI,  i,  169-170).  Possibly  Rosencrantz  and  Guil- 
denstern  have  brought  the  news:  they  seem  to  be  consid- 
ered especially  conversant  with  English  affairs  and  may  have 
come  from  there.  But  thereafter  England  rings  through 
the  king's  speeches,  until  the  Norse  and  Polish  problems  are 
forgot.  Finance,  after  all,  is  the  basis  of  power.  Claudius 
first  thinks  therefore  of  sending  the  heir  to  the  throne  in 
solemn  embassy  to  that  country : 

"he  shall  with  speed  to  England 
For  the  demand  of  our  neglected  tribute," 

(III,  i,  169-170) 

and  incidentally — what  the  king  is  hoping  for — Hamlet  may 
recover  his  health  there.  The  presence  of  the  heir  apparent 
will  at  once  flatter  and  intimidate  the  English;  and  it  is 
only  after  the  death  of  Polonius,  with  its  clear  note  of  men- 
ace, that  the  king  changes  his  embassy  and  sends  his  nephew 
in  charge  of  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern. 

Were  we  in  doubt  as  to  the  importance  of  this  English 


34  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

business,  there  is  plenty  of  proof.  ''There's  letters  seal'd," 
Hamlet  tells  his  mother  (III,  iv,  202)  :  that  is,  the  embassy 
is  going  under  sealed  orders,  and  though  we  know  the.  real 
reason  therefor,  it  could  not  so  be  sent  without  arousing 
suspicion  (this  king  has  killed  one  man  successfully  and  will 
hardly  blunder  with  another) ,  were  it  not  that  the  gravity 
of  the  English  situation  makes  them  seem  natural.  We 
know  furthermore  that  England  has  but  recently  been  con- 
quered— by  Hamlet's  father — and  for  Denmark  to  lose^liat 
she  has  just  gained  would  be  to  damage  her  prestige  irre- 
parably.    Says  the  king : 

"And,  England,  if  my  love  thou  hold'st  at  aught — 
As  my  great  power  thereof  may  give  thee  sense, 
Since  yet  thy  cicatrice  looks  raw  and  red 
After  the  Danish  sword,  and  thy  free  awe 
Pays  homage  to  us — thou  may'st  not  coldly  set 
Our  sovereign  process." 

(IV,  iii,  58-63) 

Clearly,  it  is  Denmark's  iron  purpose  to  hold  her  English 
possessions. 

In  the  third  place,  from  Hamlet's  forgery  of  the  royal 
commission,  since  he  will  make  it  as  much  like  the  original 
as  he  can,  we  can  see  with  what  gravity  Claudius  finds  it 
necessary  to  address  the  officials  in  England.  He  writes,  as 
President  Wilson  would  say,  a  solemn  declaration.  Hamlet 
tells  us  it  ran  about  as  follows : 

"An  earnest  conjuration  from  the  king, 
As  England  was  his  faithful  tributary, 
As  love  between  them  like  the  paliii  might  flourish, 
As  peace  should  still  her  wheaten  garland  wear 
And  stand  a  comma  'tween  their  amities. 
And  many  such-like  'As'es'  of  great  charge," 

(V,  ii,  38-43) 

and  so  on.  Hamlet  makes  fun  of  these  **As'es,"  but  Hamlet 
is  no  practical  statesman,  and  it  is  evident  that  the  king 
found  it  necessary,  in  addressing  England — and  the  docu- 
ment reads  as  if  it  were  intended  for  public  consumption — 
to  issue  a  warning  and  a  threat. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  35 

Lastly,  this  matter  of  the  tribute  is  important  enough  to 
warrant  a  formal  embassy  from  England  to  the  court  of 
Denmark,  which  Fortinbras,  with  his  customary  cold  sa- 
gacity, has  picked  up  and  brought  with  him  to  Elsinore.  We 
can  not  suppose  that  these  ambassadors  have  come  merely 
to  announce  the  deaths  of  Rosencrantz  and  his  fellow.  Put- 
ting them  out  of  the  way  is  a  minor  matter :  so  far  as  the 
English  know  they  are  arrant  knaves  for  whom  "no  shriv- 
ing time"  is  "allowed."  Fortinbras  would  not  cling  to  the 
embassy  were  these  mere  messengers.  It  is  the  question  of 
the  dependency  of  England  upon  the  Danish  crown  that  is 
at  stake :  this  is  "our  affairs  from  England"  that  "come  too 
late,"  and  only  incidentally  are  the  deaths  of  Hamlet's  two 
school  fellows  the  purpose  of  the  mission. 

A  difficult  diplomatic  question  with  "old  Norway";  a 
war  in  Poland  into  which  Denmark  can  not  afford  to  be 
drawn ;  the  tactful  handling  of  a  successful  filibusterer ;  the 
problem  of  the  Danish  succession ;  the  ruling  of  a  .distant  and 
disorderly  province — ^these  are  the  extraordinary  conditions 
which  a  ruler  of  Denmark  must  face.  That  the  situation 
requires  extraordinary  skill  is  obvious.  Denmark  is, 
furthermore,  much  in  the  world's  eye,  and  anxious  to  make 
a  good  appearance.  Polonius  counsels  Laertes,  while  re- 
maining a  Dane  ("to  thine  own  self  be  true"),  to  conduct 
himself  in  France  like  a  cosmopolitan;  Danish  gentlemen 
flock  to  Paris,  as  we  know  from  Polonius'  instructions  to 
Reynaldo,^*  where  they  become  part  of  the  international 
movements  of  the  times,  taking  the  Elizabethan  grand  tour, 
and  imbibing  all  the  fashionable  vices,  which  Polonius  cata- 
logs with  the  envious  admiration  of  a  provincial.  Polonius, 
by  the  by,  apes  the  man-of-the-world  air  and  the  knowing 
wisdom  of  a  Ben  Franklin,  who  also  lived  in  Paris  and  knew 
the  world.  French  gentlemen  come  to  Elsinore:  witness 
Lamond,  a  Norman 

"the  brooch  indeed 
And  gem  of  all  the  nation" 

(IV,  vii,  93-94) 


"11,   i,   1-74. 


36  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

who  might  go  where  he  pleases  but  chooses  Elsinore  because 
it  is  becoming  an  important  capital.  Danish  students  flock 
to  Wittenberg,  where  all  the  young  men  of  the  court  from 
the  prince  down  are  educated.  And  at  home  young  Osric  is^ 
a  type  of  the  international  fop,  and  the  courtiers  are  of  the 
international  stripe :  for  example,  the  terrified  conservative 
who,  announcing  the  approach  of  Laertes'  mob,  complains 
that 

"Antiquity  [is]  forgot,  customs  not  known" 

as  though  it  were  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature  for  a 
crowd  to  lose  its  head.  Denmark  is,  in  fine,  an  important 
country,  a  conquering  country,  a  country  of  which  great 
things  are  expected ;  and  there  is  double  reason  for  sagacity 
in  the  conduct  of  its  affairs. 

But  as  though  these  difficulties  were  not  enough,  there  is 
worse  behind.  I  have  already  hinted  at  the  character  of 
the  Danish'  court,  and  of  the  Danish  people.  The  court  rep- 
resents a  minority,  and  is  not  in  sympathy  with  Danish 
ways.  A  king  compelled  to  pursue  the  devious  policy  I  have 
outlined  above  is  compelled  also  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  a 
rude,  barbarous,  and  warlike  people,  who  have  successfully 
concluded  three  foreign  wars  under  the  late  king,  and  now, 
flushed  with  victory,  do  not  realize  that  their  resources  are 
exhausted.  Frankly  jingoistic,  they  have  no  patience  with 
the  delicacies  of  diplomacy;  the  queen's  grievance  is  that 
this  is  so.  They  are  a  people  possessing  the  military  virtues, 
and  the  military  vices,  too;  and  Shakespeare,  who  did  so 
much  so  easily,  is  careful  to  indicate  that  the  task  of  govern- 
ing Denmark  is  not  rendered  any  easier  by  the  character  of 
its  inhabitants. 

The  play  opens,  as  I  have  said,  with  much  military  fan- 
fare ;  young  Marcellus,  who  is  delightful,  models  himself  on 
his  elders,  is  proud  that  he  is  a  "liegeman"  to  the  Dane,  and 
bids  farewell  to  Francisco  with  a  swagger — ''honest  soldier,'* 
he  calls  him,  which  must  tickle  Francisco  mightily.  Then 
there  is  more  military  talk,  and  suddenly  Bernardo,  a 
grizzled  veteran  who  knew  the  old  king,  discovers  Horatio, 


The  King  in  Hamlet  37 

the  courtier-scholar,  and  in  amused  surprise  that  so  silken 
a  gentleman  should  turn  out  on  the  fortifications  of  Elsinore 
at  twelve  o'clock  of  a  bitter  cold  night  that  makes  even  the 
hardened  Francisco  grumble,  exclaims : 

"Say, 
What,  is  Horatio  there?" 

(I,  i,  18-19) 

And  the  frozen  Horatio  gloomily  responds : 

**A  piece  of  him," 

(I,  i,  19) 

a  little  later  he  testily  growls : 

"Tush,  tush,  'twill  not  appear," 

(I,  i,  30) 

and  for  a  while  the  ghost  has  lost  its  terror.  Nothing  could 
be  more  natural  or  more  delightful,  and  nothing  could  be 
more  illuminating,  either,  for  it  is  from  this  hint  of  the  gap 
between  court  and  commoner  that  the  whole  Danish  in- 
ternal problem  is  developed/^ 

How  thoroughly  out  of  patience  the  commoners  are  with 
the  court  the  talk  of  the  grave-diggers  shows.  Moreover, 
the  people  are  becoming  restive :  Hamlet  has  recognized  the 
fact  for  "three  years"  (V,  i,  135),  and  they  are  demand- 
ing a  share  in  the  government :  "the  ratifiers  and  props  of 
every  word,"  they  cry : 

"Choose  we;  Laertes  shall  be  king*!" 

They  are  tired  of  court  elections,  and  as  for  the  notion  of 
choosing  their  own  king,  they 


i^When  Hamlet,  that  "glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form"  comes  on  these 
battlements  the  next  night,  he  straightway  complains  of  the  air  that  bites  his 
royal  person.  "It  is  very  cold,"  he  says,  and  Horatio  renders  the  antiphone  :  "It  is 
a  nipping  and  an  eager  air."  This  same  Hamlet,  by  the  by,  son  of  a  conquering 
king,  marvels  how  "a  delicate  and  tender  prince"  like  Fortinbras  can  lead  an 
"army  of  such  mass  and  charge,"  an  "example"  to  him,  as  he  says,  "gross  as" 
earth."  By  a  fine  irony,  as  soon  as  Hamlet  complains  of  the  cold  in  the  platform 
scene,  his  father's  canngn  are  shot  off  in  honor  of  the  national  custom  of  getting 
drunk    (I,  iv  and  IV,  iv). 


38  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"applaud   it  to   the   clouds." 

Laertes'  riot,  accordingly,  comes  near  to  revolution:  looks, 
indeed,  "giant-like"  and  is  "rebellion"  (IV,  v,  118). 

If  we  reverse  the  point  of  view,  we  find  the  aristocrats 
equally  at  odds  with  the  commoners.  The  vulgar  get  drunk, 
and  Hamlet,  applying  the  international  standards  he  has 
learned  abroad  to  local  customs,  complains  that  they  get 
drunk,  not  like  gentlemen,  but  like  swine.  Polonius  is  es- 
pecially insulted  when  Hamlet  calls  him  a  common  fish- 
monger ;  the  phrase  lingers  with  him,  and  the  old  gentleman, 
much  nettled,  announces  that  Hamlet  is  "far  gone"  (II,  ii, 
188).  The  court  taste  in  art — play-writing,  for  instance — 
is  loftily^^  indifferent  to  that  of  the  vulgar — caviare  to  the 
general,  who  "are  capable  of  nothing  but  inexplicable  dumb- 
show  and  noise"  (III,  ii,  11-12),  and  prefer — and  Hamlet 
always,  when  he  desires  to  roil  Polonius,  calls  him  some- 
thing "common"  —  "a  jig  or  a  tale  of  bawdry"  (II,  ii,  494) . 
When  Hamlet  tells  his  uncle  that  "a  king  may  go  a  progress 
through  the  guts  of  a  beggar"  (IV,  iii,  30-31) ,  Claudius,  hor- 
rified at  this  unseemly  association  of  king  and  commoner, 
hastily  interrupts  him:  "Where  is  Polonius?"  he  asks  (IV, 
iii,  32),  lest  the  court  hear  worse.  Claudius,  it  is  true,  has 
more  understanding  of  the  multitude  than  anybody  else,  but 
even  he  complains  on  occasion  that  they  don't  think.  They 
are 

"muddied, 
Thick  and  unwholesome  in  their  thoughts  and  whispers." 

(IV,  V,  78-79) 

And  nothing  is  more  illuminating  than  Laertes'  contemptu- 
ous dismissal  of  the  mob  when  he  is  through  with  it. 

The  people  instinctively  resent  this  attitude.  They  have 
had  one  military  hero,  and  they  want  another :  Laertes,  who 
is  bluff  and  hearty  and  boisterous,  if  he  will  serve  them. 


i^""The  censure  of  one  judicious  man  [Hamlet?]  must  in  your  allowance  o'erwei^h 
a  whole  theater  of  others"  who  are  but  "barren  spectators,"  Hamlet  tells  the  play- 
ers   (III,   ii,   25-27;   40).     I  have   slightly  modified  the  wording. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  39 

Hamlet  is  a  dilletante ;  Horatio,  a  student ;  the  king,  a  diplo- 
mat ;  Polonius,  a  backstairs  politician ;  Cornelius  and  Volti- 
mand,  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern,  superior  errand  boys; 
Osric,  a  fop ;  and  of  the  important  men  of  the  play,  but  two 
have  anything  of  the  Viking  about  them.  But  Laertes  is 
too  intent  on  his  Berserker  revenge  to  use — or  abuse — his 
popularity,  and  Fortinbras  is  a  foreigner.  From  the  pop- 
ular point  of  view  the  government  has  been  ruined  by  for- 
eign manners,  foreign  clothes,  foreign  tricks  of  speech ;  all 
men  are  mad  in  England,  we  read  with  some  alarm,  which 
means  merely  that  all  Danishmen,  and  only  Danishmen,  are 
sane.  Even  Hamlet,  who  can  not  stomach  the  national 
drunkenness,  finds  Osric  too  much  for  him.  Yet  these  are 
the  aristocrats  the  king  must  employ  for  the  salvation  of 
the  nation. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  opposition  which  Shakespeare 
creates  between  the  court  and  the  people  in  Hamlet  is  noth- 
ing more  than  his  usual  practice,  but  I  do  not  think  so.  There 
is  no  such  breach  between  the  aristocrats  and  the  commoners 
in  most  of  the  other  plays.  They  may  quarrel,  but  they 
quarrel  like  Englishmen  as  in  Henry  VI,  or  like  Romans  as 
in  Julius  Caesar,  or  like  Scotchmen  as  in  Macbeth.  They  are 
all  of  a  piece,  so  to  speak,  all  nationals  and  have  a  common 
aim.  But  in  Hamlet  and  in  Coriolanus,  which  is  much  like 
Hamlet,  Shakespeare  pictures  an  aristocracy  at  complete  va- 
riance with  the  national  will,  so  that  the  court  at  Elsinore 
is  like  an  alien  island  in  the  Danish  sea. 

Ill 

Hamlet  is  a  family  tragedy.  We  may  seem  to  have  wan- 
dered far  from  our  starting  point,  but  I  think  not,  for  we 
can  not  understand  that  tragedy  unless  we  understand  the 
background  against  which  we  are  to  see  it  working  out.  The 
problem  that  confronts  the  Danish  royal  house  is  tv\^o-fold. 
On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  problem  of  successfully  govern- 
ing what  is,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  Danish  empire,  to 
hold  which  strains  the  resources  of  the  state.  On  the  other 
hand  the  king  must  satisfy  conditions  at  home.  In  a  crude 
figure,  the  king  must  ride  two  horses — ^the  court  and  the 


40  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

people,  and  at  the  same  time  steer  his  chariot  down  a  tor- 
tuous and  rocky  road. 

The  foreign  and  domestic  policy  of  the  late  king,  like  his 
character,  was  direct  and  simple.  It  is  he  who  has  beat  the 
Norse  and  the  Poles  and  the  English.  He  has  annexed  two 
of  these  countries,  or  at  least  rendered  them  feudatories  of 
his  crown.  As  a  consequence  he  has  become  the  great  folk- 
hero  of  the  nation.  As  he  was  a  general,  so  he  was  not  a 
diplomat,  and  he  concluded  a  treaty  with  Fortinbras  of 
Norway  in  a  chivalric,  not  to  say  romantic,  manner  worthy 
of  a  paladin  in  Ariosto,  but  quite  impracticable  as  a  rule 
of  treaty-making.     By  this 

"seal'd   compact, 
Well  ratified  by  law  and  heraldry," 

(this  is  the  Danish  view  of  the  matter) ,  Fortinbras 

"Did  forfeit,  with  his  life,  all  those  his  lands 
Which  he  stood  seized  of,  to  the  conqueror: 
Against  the  which,  a  moiety  competent 
Was  gaged  by  our  king;  which  had  return'd 
To  the  inheritance  of  Fortinbras, 
Had  he  been  vanquisher;  as,  by  the  same  covenant 
And  carriage  of  the  article  design'd, 
His  fell  to  Hamlet." 

(I,  i,  86-95) 

That  is,  they  fought  a  duel  and  wagered  their  kingdoms,  in 
effect,  on  the  outcome.  As  romance  this  is  magnificent 
(Mais  quel  geste!  as  Cyrano  said)  but  as  a  piece  of  foreign 
policy,  it  is  shortsighted  and  dangerous.  Young  Fortinbras 
may  very  properly  feel  aggrieved  that  his  inheritance  was 
lost  to  him  in  a  duel,  like  a  stake  at  cards,  and  one  may 
imagine  that  Denmark  will  have  to  exert  every  resource  to 
keep  the  conquest  thus  doubtfully  won.  In  Shakespeare's 
day  feudalism  was  already  taking  on  an  antique  character, 
and  Henry  V,  his  favorite  king,  is  a  popular  leader,  not  a 
feudal  chief. 

Hamlet  has  also  fought  and  conquered  Poland.  Likewise  he 
has  invaded  England  after  the  same  delightfully  direct  and 


The  King  in  Hamlet  41 

totally  unconciliatory  manner,  much  like  Cromwell  in  Ire- 
land. Now  Denmark  is,  after  all,  provincial,  as  Shake- 
speare clearly  shows,  and  though  she  shines  in  the  world's 
eye,  it  is  with  delusive  and  temporary  brilliance  like  Sweden 
under  Charles  XII.  Having  got  her  empire,  the  grand  prob- 
lem is  to  keep  it,  and  so  far  as  we  know  old  Hamlet  never 
solved  this  problem.  Wise  men,  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
third  foreign  war  (in  whatever  order  they  occurred),  may 
well  have  dreaded  the  future.  Conquests  cost  men  and 
money;  two  months  after  Hamlet's  death,  that  is  to  say, 
some  time  after  these  "successful"  conquests,  we  find  that 
the  state  must  strain  every  effort  merely  to  raise  a  force 
sufficient  to  overawe  the  disaffected  Norse; 

"Why  this  same  strict  and  most  observant  watch 
So  nightly  toils  the  subject  of  the  land, 
And  why  such  daily  cast  of  brazen  cannon, 
And  foreign  mart  for  implements  of  war; 
Why  such  impress  of  shipwrights,  whose  sore  task 
Does  not  divide  the  Sunday  from  the  week; 
What  might  be  toward,  that  this  sweaty  haste 
Doth  make  the  night  joint-labourer  with  the  day: 
Who  is't  that  can  inform  me?" 

(I,  i,  71-79) 

asks  young  Marcellus,  and  wiser  men  than  he  may,  with 
deeper  and  more  alarming  meaning,  ask  the  same  question. 
As  a  conqueror  old  Hamlet,  like  Charles  XII,  has  overshot 
his  mark  and  leaves  behind  him  an  exhausted  state.  The 
very  "implements  of  war"  have  to  be  sought  in  "foreign 
mart" ;  the  arsenal  must  be  replenished ;  the  navy  is  at  a  low 
state.  Yet  warfare  was  a  comparatively  simple  matter,  too. 
How  far  the  elder  Hamlet  would  have  gone  we  do  not 
know,  but  if  we  are  to  judge  him  by  his  ghost,  he  would  have 
gone  till  he  dropped.  For  the  ghost,  who,  the  simple-minded 
sentinels  believe,  has  returned  to  watch  over  his  beloved 
Denmark,  by  a  fine  irony  says  not  a  word  about  Denmark, 
and  exhibits  not  the  slightest  concern  for  her  perilous  posi- 
tions— which,  incidentally,  he  is  mainly  responsible  for. 
His  whole  concern  is,  first  of  all,  for  himself;  he  begins  by 


42  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

complaining  about  the  discomforts  of  purgatory  (the  exist- 
ence of  which,  by  the  by,  his  son  very  much  doubts),  and 
explains  that  he  would  not  thus  have  had  his  majesty  dis- 
comforted, if  he  had  not  been 

"Cut  off  even  in  the  blossoms  of  my  sin, 
Unhousel'd,  disappointed,  unaneled; 
No  reckoning  made,  but  sent  to  my  account 
With  all  my  imperfections  on  my  head." 

(I,  V,  76-79) 

It  is  this,  not  the  loss  of  his  wife's  love,  that  is 

"O,  horrible!  0,  horrible!  Most  horrible!" 

(I,  V,  80) 

His  redeeming  feature  throughout  the  scene  is  his  love  of 
Gertrude,  for  whom  he  makes  both  here  and  later  a  pathetic 
plea,  but  even  this  love — for  we  are  all  human — was,  he  ex- 
plains, 

"of  that  dignity 
That  it  went  hand  in  hand  even  with  the  vow 
I  made  to  her  in  marriage," 

(I,  V,  48-50) 

as  though  that  were  something  remarkable  in  a  husband. 
And  what  hurts  his  egotistic  majesty  is  not  alone  that  his 
wife  deserted  him,  but  that  she  deserted  him  for  so  inferior 
a  specimen  as  Claudius,  whom  the  ghost  abuses  in  a  frank 
but  unchristian  spirit  as  a  ''serpent,"  "that  incestuous,  that 
adulterate  beast,"  "a  wretch,  whose  natural  gifts  were  poor 
To  those  of  mine !"  (I,  v,  51-52) .  All  the  pangs  of  purgatory 
have  not  softened  either  the  egotism  or  the  complacency  or 
the  brutal  directness  of  Hamlet's  father.  It  is  all  of  a  piece 
that  the  king  who  slew  Fortinbras  single-handed,  made 
England  a 

"cicatrice  raw  and  red 
After  the  Danish  sword," 

and  exhausted  Denmark,  complacently  compares  himself  to 
"a  radiant  angel,"  to  whom  *'lust" — the  wife  he  adores — 
was  once  happily  ''linked,"  only  to 


The  King  in  Hamlet  43 

"sate  itself  in  a  celestial  bed 
And  prey  on  garbage." 

(I,  V,  56-57) 

A  low  view  of  women  is  a  family  failing.  Is  it  surprising 
that  a  man  of  these  violent  delights  should  come  to  violent 
ends? 

Such  was  the  former  king  of  Denmark,  a  Scandinavian 
Hotspur,  a  fictional  Henry  V,  a  Berserker  outmoded  in  a 
world  in  which  "hangers"  are  called  ''carriages"  and  are 
"delicate"  and  "of  a  very  liberal  conceit,"  and  the  French 
rapier  has  replaced  the  battle  axe  (V,  ii,  passim) .  He  has, 
like  all  of  Shakespeare's  characters,  a  redeeming  humanity  : 
the  adoration  of  the  populace,  his  love  for  his  wife,  the  affec- 
tion of  his  son,  whom,  I  imagine,  he  did  not  well  understand. 
Add  to  these  a  certain  engaging  simplicity  and  frankness,  a 
magnificent  and  Jovian  presence  (note  the  "eye  like  Mars,  to 
threaten  and  command"),  and  we  have  said  all.  A  hero 
king,  but  a  king,  it  is  perfectly  obvious,  who,  if  he  continues, 
will  ruin  Denmark  which  he  regards,  indeed,  as  so  much 
personal  property.  Add  that  human  lives  mean  as  little  to 
him  as  they  did  to  Napoleon :  young  Hamlet,  brought  up  in 
the  traditions  of  his  father,  is  sickened  by  it,  and  thinks  of 
war  as  a 

"fantasy  and  trick  of  fame" 

in  which 

"twenty  thousand  men.    . 
[May]  go  to  their  graves  like  beds,  fight  for  a  plot.    .    . 
Which  is  not  tomb  enough  and  continent 
To  hide  the  slain." 

(IV,  iv,  60-65) 

Incidentally,  for  we  are  none  of  us  consistent,  this  same  del- 
icate-minded prince  is  the  son  of  his  father,  for  he  sends 
Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern  to  their  deaths  by  a  piece  of 
trickery  and  finds  for  it  the  usual  cold  excuse  of  royalty : 


44  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"  'Tis  dangerous  when  the  baser  nature  comes 
Between  the  pass  and  fell  Incensed  points 
Of  mighty  opposites." 

(V,  ii,  60-62) 

His  father  (or  his  uncle)  would  applaud  and  appreciate  the 
apothegm.  But  such  a  king  as  old  Hamlet,  I  repeat,  would 
ruin  any  country,  and  most  of  all,  a  poor  and  small  one.  Is 
not  Denmark  a  prison,  or  at  least  one  of  the  worst  wards  ? 

That  this  is  not  the  traditional  view  of  old  king  Hamlet  is 
due,  I  think,  to  the  fact  that  v/e  are  too  easily  led  to  accept 
young  Hamlet's  opinion  of  him.  The  prince  is  shrewd 
enough  in  other  ways :  he  can  manage  a  court  intrigue,  or 
overset  one,  with  any  man.  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern 
are  putty  in  his  hands ;  but  like  most  dilletantes  (and  I  do 
not  use  the  word  disrespectfully),  he  has  little  sense  for 
Realpolitik,  and  could  never  in  a  thousand  years  understand 
that  his  father  was,  perhaps,  not  an  ideal  king  in  Denmark. 
Moreover  he  has  been  away  at  college  during  the  last,  and, 
we  may  assume,  the  more  disastrous,  or  at  any  rate,  more 
ominous,  years  of  his  father's  reign,  and  he  is  much  more 
interested  in  philosophy  than  he  is  in  the  foreign  relations 
and  the  internal  conditions  of  Denmark.  Finally,  he  is  a 
prejudiced  witness  as  any  child  must  be. 

The  wiser  heads  at  Elsinore  are  growing  more  uneasy  as 
the  state  is  impoverished  at  the  behest  of  an  egotistic  and 
bloody  warlord.^^  Nor  are  the  younger  set  much  better 
pleased.  Elsinore  is  a  gloomy  court,  set  in  the  midst  of  a 
camp  where  there  is  no  amusement.  Polite  learning  has  to 
be  sought  in  Wittenberg.  When  the  players  come  from  that 
fair  city,  they  are  such  a  rarity  at  Elsinore  that  the  art-hun- 
gry Hamlet,  with  uncourtly  precipitancy,  demands  a  speech 
before  the  players  can  even  utter  their  greetings.     Laertes, 


I'Does  not  Hamlet  ironically  address  his  uncle-king  in  what  is  apparently  tradi- 
tional court  etiquette,  in  the  one  letter  he  writes  him,  as  "high  and  mighty"  (IV, 
vii,  43)  ?  And  that  old  Hamlet  built  an  absolute  power,  using  the  king's  divinity  to 
strengthen  it,  we  may  gather  from  Claudius'  actions,  and  from  Marcellus'  fear  of 
striking  at  the  ghost: 

"We  do  it  wrong,   being  so  majestical. 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence." 

(I,   i,   143-144) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  45 

bored  at  court,  returns  to  Paris.  Hamlet  would  like  to  go 
back  to  school.  There  is,  however,  plenty  of  drill  and  sol- 
diery, cannon  are  going  off  through  the  whole  play,  and 
drums  are  continually  sounded.  Does  not  Osric  cut  a  poor 
figure  in  all  this  martial  ardor?  Does  not  Hamlet,  for  that 
matter,  seem  himself  out  of  place?  What  is  displeasing  to 
the  elder  generation  for  economic,  is  displeasing  to  the 
younger  generation  for  social,  reasons. 

Under  these  circumstances  what  occurs?  That  which  is 
common  in  absolute  monarchies,  as  the  pages  of  Gibbon 
show,  a  palace  revolution,  carried  out  so  neatly  and  so 
quietly  that  the  populace  is  thoroughly  deceived — to  the 
disgust  of  the  ghost,  who  complains  of  the  very  success  of 
the  plot: 

"so  the  whole  ear  of  Denmark 
Is  by  a  forged  process  of  my  death 
Rankly  abused." 

(I,  V,  36-38) 

In  plain  terms,  during  the  absence  of  his  son,  old  Hamlet 
is  quietly  poisoned  by  his  brother  Claudius,  who,  a  month 
later,  has  taken  his  sister-in-law  to  wife  and  made  himself 
king  of  Denmark. 

Now  for  a  moment  let  us  forget  the  fact  of  the  murder. 
Let  us  also  put  aside  for  the  moment  our  moral  judgment 
on  it.  Let  us  suppose  we  know  no  more  of  Claudius'  vil- 
lainy than,  let  us  say,  does  Osric.  Is  not  the  significant 
thing,  not  Hamlet's  death,  but  the  fact  that,  with  the  single 
exception  of  young  Hamlet,  there  is  not  a  single  living  being 
in  Elsinore  who  fails  to  acquiesce  in  the  irregular  corona- 
tion of  Claudius  as  natural  and  desirable,  though  the  next 
"heir"  is  put  aside,  as  he,  and  he  alone,  is  careful  to  tell  us? 
Claudius  instantly  commands  the  obedience  of  every  person 
in  the  tragedy  save  the  malcontents,  Hamlet  and  Fortinbras. 
Polonius  is  his  loyal  servitor.  Cornelius  and  Voltimand 
run  his  errands.  Osric  is  his  agent.  Horatio  and  Marcellus 
announce  themselves  as  "friends  to  this  ground.  And 
liegemen  to  the  Dane"  (I,  i,  15).  Rosencrantz  and  Guild- 
enstern  accept  a  dangerous  and  difficult  task  without  a  mur- 
mur, and  in  the  course  of  that  mission  go  to  their  deaths, 


46  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

so  far  as  we  know,  without  even  accusing  the  king  of  his 
apparent  treachery,  or  trying  to  explain  the  forgery  of  the 
warrants,  or  protesting  the  execution.  And — final  tribute — 
the  Danish  populace  toils  night  and  day  at  the  behest  of 
one  who  Hamlet  and  the  ghost  would  have  us  believe  is  a 
mere  adulterate  beast,  and  when  they  do  riot,  riot  because 
Hamlet  and  not  Claudius  is  at  fault!  How  can  we  ex- 
plain this,  unless  we  understand  what  is  clearly  evident, 
that  Hamlet's  view  of  Claudius  is  merely  Hamlet's  view, 
and  that  his  succession  to  the  throne  is  by  everyone  else 
regarded  as  being  for  the  general  good  of  Denmark?  And 
is  it  not  also  evident  that  Hamlet's  succession  to  the  throne, 
that  is  to  say,  the  crowning  of  a  green,  hypochondriacal 
university  student  still  in  the  adolescent  stage  of  toying 
with  suicide,  would  have  spelled  the  ruin  of  Denmark? 
Such,  at  least,  seems  to  me  to  be  the  common-sense  view  of 
the  situation. 

The  coronation   of  Claudius,   it  is  true,  has  inevitably 
awakened  some  sleeping  dogs.     The  Norwegians, 

"Holding  a  weak  supposal  of  our  worth," 

(I,  ii,  18) 

have  bestirred  themselves;  young  Fortinbras 

"hath  not  fail'd  to  pester  us;'* 

(I,  ii,  22) 

and  the  English  have  neglected  tribute.  How  promptly 
and  adroitly  Claudius  meets  these  problems  I  have  already 
indicated.  Overwhelming  Norway  with  a  show  of  force,  he 
secures  through  his  embassy  a  distinct  diplomatic  triumph ; 
not  only  is  Fortinbras  prevented  from  warring  against 
Denmark,  his  arms  are  turned  against  Poland,  and  further- 
more Norway  itself  is  to  pay  for  the  expedition !  The  ene- 
mies of  Denmark  thus  waste  their  forces  on  each  other. 
Claudius  must  now  steer  clear  of  Poland  and  young  For- 
tinbras. This  he  does  by  the  time-honored  device  of  diplo- 
matic delay.     If  Poland  complains,  Claudius  can  point  out 


The  King  in  Hamlet  47 

that  he  has  never  given  permission  for  the  passage  of  a 
Norse  army  through  Danish  soil;  if  Fortinbras  complains, 
he  can  cite  the  declaration  of  sympathy  uttered  in  open 
court  and  invent  plausible  excuses  for  delay.  When  at 
length  Fortinbras  invades  the  soil  of  Denmark,  he  clearly 
puts  himself  in  the  wrong;  and  v^hat  Claudius  might  have 
done  with  him,  had  he  lived,  we  do  not  know,  except  that 
it  would  have  been  something  adroit,  skillful,  and  inexpen- 
sive. One  can  imagine  old  Hamlet  in  the  midst  of  these 
events.  One  can  also  imagine  young  Hamlet,  but  one  does 
not  like  to.  In  brief,  Claudius  is  an  expert  and  finished 
diplomat. 

Shakespeare,  whose  opening  scenes  so  well  repay  study, 
knew  the  value  of  first  impressions  as  the  beginnings  of 
Richard  III,  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and 
Macbeth  testify;  and  it  is  therefore  significant  that  when 
we  first  see  Claudius  it  is  in  his  capacity  of  governor  of 
the  state,  and  on  a  political  occasion.  Before  that  time  no 
one  has  spoken  of  him  for  good  or  bad;  indeed,  if  there 
were  no  playbill,  we  should  not  know  until  we  see  him  that 
such  a  person  exists  in  the  play.  But  when  he  does  appear 
it  is  as  the  ruler  of  Denmark,  and  Shakespeare  wants  us  to 
realize  that  he  is  every  inch  a  king.^^ 

The  occasion  is  apparently  the  first  public  function  at 
Elsinore  since  the  death  of  Hamlet,  and  Claudius  is  to  de- 
liver a  speech  from  the  throne,  as  the  end  of  the  mourning 
period  h.2S  come.  A  prion,  we  must  suppose  that  curiosity 
is  alert  to  observe  how  well  he  conducts  himself.  Now,  as 
played  on  the  stage,  his  speech  is  mere  bombast,  whereas 
in  point  of  fact,  his  oration  on  this  occasion  as  a  sample  of 
royal  speech-making  is  superb :  few  kings  can  cover  so  many 
difficult  topics  so  ably  in  what  amounts  by  actual  count  to 
three  hundred  words.  In  language  carefully  chosen  for  the 
occasion,  we  are  first  told  of  the  dynastic  situation:  old 
Hamlet  is  dead,  and  recognition  is  given  his  popularity: 


i^Claudius  appears  in  eleven  scenes :  I,  ii ;  II,  ii ;  III,  i ;  III,  ii ;  III,  iii ;  IV,  i ; 
IV,  iii ;  IV,  v ;  IV,  vii ;  V,  i ;  V,  ii.  As  if  to  mark  his  royal  function  Shakespeare 
explicitly  surrounds  him  with  attendants  in  six  of  these  scenes,  provides  him  with 
courtiers  in  three  more,  and  lets  him  enter  alone  only  once    (IV,   v). 


48  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"it  us  befitted 
To  bear  our  hearts  in  grief  and  our  whole  kingdom 
To  be  contracted  in  one  brow  of  woe." 

(I,  ii,  2-4) 

Then  follows  a  graceful  transition  to  that  most  delicate 
of  topics,  the  recent  marriage;  and  as  we  must  remember 
that  Claudius  is  addressing  a  court  fond  of  Euphuistic 
phraseology,  we  see  how  cleverly  he  has  worded  his  address, 
so  that  what  seems  to  be  mere  windy  rhetoric  in  our  day  is 
explicitly  intended  to  tickle  the  ears  of  the  courtiers,  and  to 
cover  the  error — if  it  was  error — of  haste: 

"our  sometime  sister,  now  our  queen 


Have  we,  as  'twere  with  a  defeated  joy, — 

With  an  auspicious  and  a  dropping  eye. 

With  mirth  in  funeral  and  with  dirge  in  marriage, 

In  equal  scale  weighing  delight  and  dole, — 

Taken  to  wife." 

(I,  ii,  8-14) 

The  blank  verse  may  halt  for  it,  but  this  is  not  intended  to 
please  us;  it  is  intended  to  please  a  court  that  commonly 
talks  in  the  fashion  caricatured  in  Osric.  Lastly,  under 
this  head  the  king  carefully  hints  that  in  the  matter  of  the 
marriage  he  has  yielded  to  public  pressure : 

"nor  have  we  herein  barr'd 
Your  better  wisdoms,  which  have  freely  gone 
With  this  affair  along," 

(I,  ii,  14-16) 

and  adds  like  the  skillful  speaker  that  he  is, 

"For  all,  our  thanks." 

(I,  ii,  16) 

Having  thus  exhibited  his  rhetorical  prowess,  Claudius 
proceeds  to  the  international  situation,  in  the  handling  of 
which  he  exhibits  an  equal  mastery  over  clear  and  direct 
address.  He  recounts  the  situation  in  Norway,  past  and 
present,   skillfully  touches  on  the  patriotic  chord    (every 


The  King  in  Hamlet  49 

heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string),  and  refers  with  equal 
adroitness  to  the  glorious  manner  in  which  Norway  was 
won : 

"Lost  by  his  father,  with  all  bonds  of  law, 
.  To  our  most  valiant  brother," 

(I,  ii,  24-25) 

an  allusion  to  the  famous  duel  which  everybody  understands 
and,  in  public  at  least,  applauds.  Claudius  then  gives  ring- 
ing utterance  to  the  national  determination  to  withstand 
the  encroachments  of  Fortinbras,  showing,  indidentally, 
the  fullest  information  as  to  the  enemy  plans : 

"the  levies, 
The  lists  and  full  proportions,  are  all  made 
Out  of  his  subject," 

(I,  ii,  31-33) 

information  which  heightens  the  general  confidence  in  his 
abilities.  Then  he  turns  to  the  ambassadors  (note  the 
"good  Cornelius"),  gives  them  their  dispatches  and  con- 
cludes with  the  admirable  caution : 

"Giving  to  you  no  further  personal  power 
To  business  with  the  king  more  than  the  scope 
Of  these  delated  articles  allow," 

(I,  ii,  36-38) 

which  reads  to  me  like  a  side  hit  at  old  Hamlet's  diplomacy. 
The  last  line  of  his  speech  is  more  significant  than  it  seems : 

"Farewell,  and  let  your  haste  commend  your  duty." 

(I,  ii,  39) 

There  is  need  of  haste,  of  course,  but  why  does  the  king 
stress  "duty"? 

Why  do  Cornelius  and  Voltimand  together  promptly  an- 
swer : 

"In  that  and  all  things  will  we  show  our  duty," 

(I,  ii,  40) 


50  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

with  again  this  curious  insistence  on  "duty"?  Why,  for 
that  matter,  do  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern  give  them- 
selves so  fully  to  the  king's  service  ? 

"we  both  obey, 
And  here  give  up  ourselves,  in  the  full  bent 
To  lay  our  service  freely  at  your  feet, 
To  be  commanded." 

(II,  ii,  29-32) 

Why  does  Polonius  remark  three  minutes  after  this  speech : 

"I  assure  my  good  liege, 
I  hold  my  duty  as  I  hold  my  soul. 
Both  to  my  God  and  to  my  gracious  king?" 

(II,  ii,  43-45) 

And,  more  important,  why  does  Shakespeare,  as  it  were, 
go  out  of  his  way  in  the  third  scene  of  Act  Three,  and  for 
seventeen  lines  play  a  fantasia  on  the  same  theme?  It  is 
just  after  Hamlet's  play.  The  king  has  said  that  Hamlet 
must  go  to  England  because 

"The  terms  of  our  estate  may  not  endure 
Hazard  so  near  us  as  doth  hourly  grow- 
Out  of  his  lunacies," 

(III,  iii,  5-7) 

a  clear  statement  of  the  peril  of  Denmark.  Whereupon 
the  following  replies  are  detailed  at  length : 

^^Guildenstern.     We  will  ourselves  provide : 
Most  holy  and  religious  fear  it  is 
To  keep  those  many  many  bodies  safe 
That  live  and  feed  upon  your  majesty. 
Rosencrantz.     The  single  and  peculiar  life  is  bound, 
With  all  the  strength  and  armour  of  the  mind, 
To  keep  itself  from  noyance;  but  much  more 
That  spirit  upon  whose  weal  depends  and  rests 
The  lives  of  many.     The  cease  of  majesty 
Dies  not  alone;  but  like  a  gulf,  doth  draw 
What's  near  it  with  it:  it  is  a  massy  wheel, 
Fix'd  on  the  summit  of  the  highest  mount, 
To  whose  huge  spokes  ten  thousand  lesser  things 
Are  mortised  and  adjoin'd ;  which,  when  it  falls. 
Each  small  annexment,  petty  consequence. 
Attends  the  boisterous  ruin.     Never  alone 
Did  the  king  sigh,  but  with  a  general  groan." 

(Ill,  iii,  7-23) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  51 

They  are  all  alone.  On  the  very  lowest  level,  they  are  a  trio 
of  scoundrels  amongst  whom  hyprocrisy  would  be  laugh- 
able, and  speech-making  jejune.  Yet  we  have  these  long 
interpolations,  this  treatise  on  majesty.  And  why,  again, 
when  Claudius  has  told  Laertes  of  Hamlet's  attempt  on  his, 
the  king's  life,  does  Laertes  exclaim: 

"tell  me 
Why  you  proceeded  not  against  these  feats, 
So  crimeful  and  so  capital  in  nature, 
As  by  your  safety,  wisdom,  all  things  else, 
You  mainly  were  stirr'd  up," 

(IV,  vii,  5-9) 

a  strange  and  arresting  speech  when  it  is  remembered  that 
Laertes  himself  has  just  threatened  the  life  of  the  king! 
What,  in  short,  does  all  this  insistence  upon  duty,  upon  the 
importance  of  the  king's  life,  upon  the  crimeful  and  capital 
nature  of  attempts  on  that  life — what  does  all  this  mean, 
if  it  does  not  mean  that  the  policy  of  Claudius  is  the  court 
policy,  Claudius  the  only  hope  of  Denmark,  and  the  loss 
of  Claudius  a  gulf  that  will  draw  what's  near  it  with  it? 
What  does  this  mean  in  fine,  except  that  Claudius  makes  an 
excellent  king? 

He  is  not  only  a  diplomat  and  an  administrator,  he  is 
more.  Let  us  return  again  to  the  second  scene  of  the  trag- 
edy. The  speech-making  is  concluded,  Cornelius  and  Volti- 
mand  having  left  after  a  hearty  farewell.  Thereupon,  with 
an  entire  change  of  manner,  Claudius  turns  to  Laertes, 
whom  he  addresses  with  a  hail-fellow-well-met  air  meant 
for  Laertes,  and  Laertes  alone,  coupling  with  his  question 
a  flattering  allusion  to  Polonius  well  calculated  to  win  the 
heart  of  so  filial  a  son.  Laertes  tells  the  king  he  wishes 
to  return  to  France  (whence  he  came  to  show  his  "duty"), 
and  the  courtly  king,  the  father  of  his  nation,  turns  to 
Polonius : 

"Have  you  your  father's  leave?    What  says  Polonius?" 

(I,  ii,  57) 

and  in  his  most  gracious  manner  grants  the  boon. 


52  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

When  Laertes  bursts  in  upon  him  in  the  fourth  act,  Clau- 
dius continues  to  treat  him  in  the  same  paternal,  the  same 
skillful  manner.  He  reminds  Laertes  of  his  relation  to- 
wards his  sovereign,  waves  the  queen  aside,  and  without  a 
word  of  reproach,  asks  Laertes  why  he  is  incensed.  The 
frightened  queen,  in  the  ensuing  dialog,  attempts  to  pal- 
liate the  fact  of  Polonius'  death,  but  Claudius,  knowing  the 
bluff,  direct  nature  of  the  man,  palliates  nothing,  tells  him 
what  he  knows  to  be  the  truth,  bids  Laertes  ''demand  his 
fill,"  waits  patiently  while  the  young  man  rages,  puts  him 
on  the  defensive  with  a  word  here  and  there,  and  when  he 
is  calmed,  tells  him  gently: 

"Why,  now  you  speak 
Like  a  good  child  and  a  true  gentleman. 
That  I  am  guiltless  of  your  father's  death, 
And  am  most  sensibly  in  grief  for  it, 
It  shall  as  level  to  your  judgement  pierce 
As  day  does  to  your  eye." 

(IV,   V,   144-149) 

Then  Ophelia  comes  in,  mad,  an  interruption  that  in  the 
hands  of  a  less  skilled  person  than  Claudius  would  be  fatal 
to  his  safety,  but  Claudius,  with  the  utmost  show  of  frank- 
ness, keeps  Laertes  subdued  to  his  purpose.  And  in  the 
following  scene  the  same  wonderful  handling  of  men  is 
continued:  the  bewildered  Laertes,  not  knowing  how  it  is 
his  rage  has  so  far  been  spent  on  air,  ingenuously  observes : 

"And  so  have  I  a  noble  father  lost; 
A  sister  driven  into  desperate  terms, 
Whose  worth,  if  praises  may  go  back  again, 
Stood  challenger  on  mount  of  all  the  age 
For  her  perfections:   but  my  revenge  will  come." 

(IV,  vii,  25-29) 

A  little  later  the  news  of  Ophelia^s  death  is  suddenly  brought 
by  the  queen,  but  so  cleverly  has  Claudius  moulded  him  that 
his  old-time  rage  is  conquered: 

"Adieu,  my  lord: 
I  have  a  speech  of  fire  that  fain  would  blaze, 
But  that  this  folly  douts  it." 

(IV,  vii,  190-192) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  53 

The  saddened  but  triumphant  king  follows  him: 

"Let's  follow,  Gertrude : 
How  much  I  had  to  do  to  calm  his  rage!" 

(IV,  vii,  192-193) 

But  his  rage  is  permanently  calmed,  and  in  a  most  skillful 
fashion,  by  a  master,  an  adroit  master,  of  men. 

There  is  not  space  to  study  the  king's  relation  to  other 
characters :  to  Polonius,  for  instance,  for  whom  his  manner 
is  one  of  affectionate  and  respectful  familiarity;  to  Rosen- 
crantz  and  Guildenstern,  whom  he  wins  on  the  first  trial: 

"Both  your  majesties 
Might,  by  the  sovereign  power  you  have  of  us, 
Put  your  dread  pleasures  more  into  command 
Than  to  entreaty," 

(II,  ii,  26-29) 

a  speech  which  again  I  read  as  a  backward  glance  at  old 
Hamlet's  imperious  manner.  Let  us  turn  to  the  master 
test,  the  king's  treatment  of  young  Hamlet  himself. 

It  is  again  necessary  to  return  to  the  second  scene  of 
Act  One.  The  king  has  just  granted  Laertes  his  request. 
As  if  to  encourage  Hamlet  by  the  example  of  Laertes,  he 
turns  to  his  nephew  and  jocularly  asks  him: 

"How  is  it  that  the  clouds  still  hang  on  you?" 

(I,  ii,  ^Q) 

an  initial  mistake,  showing  that  he  has  misjudged  Hamlet's 
mood.  But  the  king  corrects  his  error.  After  Hamlet  has 
answered  his  mother: 

"I  have  that  within  which  passeth  show; 
These  but  the  trappings  and  the  suits  of  woe," 

(I,  ii,  85-86) 

the  king,  having  had  time  to  collect  his  resources,  speaks  to 
Hamlet,  it  seems  to  me,  as  artfully  as  he  had  addressed 
Laertes  or  the  general  court.  He  begins  in  his  most  win- 
ning manner  by  an  exquisite  piece  of  flattery  for  Hamlet's 
good  taste  and  filial  sorrow : 


54  University  of  Texas  Bulletin    . 

"  'Tis  sweet  and  commendable  in  your  nature,  Hamlet, 
To  give  these  mourning  duties  to  your  father.** 

(I,  ii,  87-88) 

He  goes  on  gently  to  point  out  that 

"to  persevere 
In  obstinate  condolement  is  a  course 
Of  impious  stubbornness," 

(I,  ii,  92-94) 

and  with  a  home  thrust  tells  him  it  shows 

"An  understanding  simple  and  unschooled." 

(I,  ii,  97) 

In  any  case  unprevailing  woe  is  "a  fault  to  nature"  (and  if 
this  were  said  by  anybody  else  we  would  without  comment 
applaud  its  wisdom),  but  especially  is  it  a  fault  in  Hamlet 
who  should 

"think  of  us 
As  of  a  father:  for  let  the  world  take  note, 
You  are  the  most  immediate  to  our  throne, 
And  with  no  less  nobility  of  love 
Than  that  which  dearest  father  bears  his  son 
Do  I  impart  toward  you," 

(I,  ii,  107-112) 

and  the  whole  ends  with  an  appeal  to  Hamlet  to  remain  at 
court  and  learn  the  business  of  being  a  king. 

Now  it  is  objected  to  this  speech,  as  to  the  queen's  before 
it,  that  it  is  a  tissue  of  maladroit  commonplaces.  As  for 
the  commonplaces  Hamlet's  admired  soliloquy  on  suicide  is 
no  less  platitudinous.  It  is  not  the  thought  but  the  poetic 
glamor  of 

"To  be,  or  not  to  be:  that  is  the  question" 

(III,  i,  56) 

which  makes  it  great.     If  it  is  a  profound  thought  that 

"in  that  sleep  of  death  what  dreams  may  come, 
When  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil," 

(III,  i,  66-67) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  55 

it  is  equally  profound  that 

"all  that  lives  must  die, 
Passing  through  nature  to  eternity," 

(I,  ii,  72-73) 

or  that 

"your  father  lost  a  father, 
That  father  lost,  lost  his,  and  the  survivor  bound 
In  filial  obligation  for  some  term 
To  do  obsequious  sorrow." 

(I,  11,  89-92) 

They  all  hang  by  the  same  thread.  It  is  all  a  matter  of 
values,  of  the  point  of  view.  To  the  tender-minded  the 
queen's  statement  is  a  coarse  and  untactful  platitude,  well 
calculated  to  draw  Hamlet's  saddened  and  ironical  reply: 

"Ay,  madam,  it  is  common." 

(I,  ii,  74) 

To  the  tough-n;iinded  the  king's  statement  is  a  bracing  and 
healthful  tonic.  When  that  is  said,  all  is  said:  one  state- 
ment is  as  tactful  as  another ;  and  for  the  practical  business 
of  statesmanship,  which  is  just  now  Hamlet's  purpose  in 
the  world,  a  cosmic  view  of  the  universe  will  never,  never 
do.  Each  speaks  out  of  his  nature;  and  I  do  not  see  how 
even  an  innocent  uncle  could  say  anything  less,  or  anything 
more,  than  Claudius  says,  or  say  it  more  skillfully.  To  re- 
mind Hamlet  that  he  is  a  man  and  a  brother  and  that  he 
has  his  work  in  the  world ;  to  meet  him  on  his  own  ground 
and  argue  the  case  philosophically;  to  tell  him  that  he  is 
nearest  and  dearest  to  the  king's  throne, 

"the  cheer  and  comfort  of  our  eye> 
Our  chiefest  courtier,  cousin  and  our  son" 

(I,  ii,  116-117) 

— what  more  can  one  expect?  Claudius  tactfully  extends 
the  olive  branch,  puts  Hamlet  on  the  defensive  as  he  later 
does  Laertes,  keeps  him  there  through  most  of  the  play; 


'56  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

and  to  the  whole  court,  to  Claudius  himself,  who  long  does 
not  know  that  Hamlet  knows  his  secret,  Hamlet's  persistent 
ill-treatment  of  his  uncle  is  thereafter  nothing  short  of  a 
public  calamity  of  which  Claudius  seems  to  everybody  en- 
tirely guiltless. 

When  Hamlet  goes  ''mad,"  Claudius  does  everything  that 
a  reasonable  and  kindly  man  could  be  expected  under  such 
circumstances  to  do ;  he  calls  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern 
to  attend  his  nephew ;  consents  to  hear  his  play ;  and  treats 
him  throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  tragedy  with  amaz- 
ing patience  and  kindness.  And  granted  that  his  motives 
are  of  the  basest,  granted  that  Rosencrantz  and  Guilden- 
stern are  spies,  that  the  king  is  cloaking  an  ulterior  purpose 
with  a  mask  of  courtesy,  my  point  is  still  that  the  king's 
methods  are  admirably  calculated  for  the  man  he  is  dealing 
with,  leaving  Hamlet  no  opening  to  pick  a  quarrel,  no  occa- 
sion for  complaint;  forcing  him  back  upon  his  purpose, 
making  him  doubt  the  ghost,  and  offering  for  Hamlet's  at- 
tack but  one  moment  of  weakness — ^that  at  the  play  which 
catches  the  king  off  his  guard.  In  short,  skillfully  as  he 
handles  Laertes,  even  more  skillfully  does  he  deal  with 
Hamlet  to  the  very  end — even  in  the  duel  scene  with  its 
ironic  courtesies  and  innuendoes;  and  Claudius,  far  from 
proving  a  fool  and  a  beast,  is  remarkable  above  everything 
else  for  his  treatment  of  those  about  him. 

Nor  is  this  all.  As  he  is  careful  to  draw  the  court  around 
him,  winning  the  allegiance  of  each  man  by  special  and  flat- 
tering treatment,  picking  his  agents,  it  seems  to  me,  with 
extraordinary  skill,^^  offering  to  Hamlet  (except  for  one 
moment  of  indecision)  a  polished  and  unassailable  front, 
Claudius  is  equally  careful  to  please  and  flatter  the  multi- 
tude. He  possesses,  or  he  apes,  the  vices  of  a  popular  king, 
the  camaraderie  of  the  bon  homme  beloved  of  the  multitude. 
He  takes  care  to  drink  deep,  or  to  appear  to : 


^"On  the  stage  today  the  process  of  making  the  king  stupid  is  continued  to  his  sub- 
ordinates, so  that  this  statement  seems  fanciful.  But  who  would  be  better  for  their 
posts  than  Hamlet's  school  fellows,  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern  ?  Who  will  better 
disarm  Hamlet's  suspicions  than  the  fop,  Osric?  What  embassy  could  prove  more 
successful  than   that  of  Voltimand  and   Cornelius? 


The  King  in  Hamlet  57 

"No  jocund  health  that  Denmark  drinks  today, 
But  the  great  cannon  to  the  clouds  shall  tell, 
And  the  king's  rouse  the  heavens  shall  bruit  again, 
Re-speaking  earthly  thunder," 

(I,  ii,  125-128) 

advertising  each  potion  to  the  populace.  He  keeps  up  the 
national  dances  and 

"the  swaggering  up-spring  reels." 

(I,  iv,  9) 

He  realizes  the  value  of  luxury  and  display  in  fixing  a  feel- 
ing of  security  in  the  popular  mind ;  and  v^e  see  him  throve 
into  his  cup 

"an  union. ... 
Eicher  than  that  which  four  successive  kings 
In  Denmark's  crown  have  worn," 

(V,  ii,  264-266) 

as  Claudius  is  careful  to  tell  us  and  the  public. ^*^  This  looks 
like  rank  extravagance,  but  small  states  like  to  think  of 
themselves  expansively.  And  with  equal  insight  Claudius 
keeps  up,  though  he  does  not  use,  the  army.  .  He  refers 
to  the  late  hero-king  in  admiring  terms,  though  he  has  no 
intention  of  imitating  his  policy;  and  he  fires  off  cannon, 
bids  the  kettledrums  play,  the  trumpets  sound,  and  the  at- 
tendants parade  because  all  this  is  part  of  his  business 
as  king  of  the  Danes,  part  of  good  policy,  and  the  source  of 
popular  confidence  and  complacency.  He  clings  to  Polonius 
as  the  representative  of  the  old  regime,  and  upon  the  death 
of  Polonius  cries  out  in  alarm, 

"0,  come  away! 
My  soul  is  full  of  discord  and  dismay," 

(IV,  i,  44-45) 

immediately  puts  Hamlet  under  arrest,  and  sets  to  v^ork  to 
counteract  the  effects  of  an  accident  so  contrary  to  his 
policy : 


2®That  this  offers   Claudius   an  opportunity  to  poison  the  drink  is   an  acting   device 
that   does  not   affect   the   argument. 


58  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"this  vile  deed 
We  must,  with  all  our  majesty  and  skill, 
Both  countenance  and  excuse." 

(IV,  i,  30-32) 

"we'll  call  up  our  wisest  friends; 
And  let  them  know,  both  what  we  mean  to  do. 
And  what's  untimely  done. . . . 
Whose  whisper  o'er  the  world's  diameter 
As  level  as  the  cannon  to  his  blank 
Transports  his  poison'd  shot,  may  miss  our  name 
And  hit  the  woundless  air." 

(IV,  i,  38-44) 

He  knows  that  the  people 

"wants  not  buzzers  to  infect  [Laertes']  ear 
With  pestilent  speeches  of  his  father's  death; 
Wherein  necessity,  of  matter  beggar'd. 
Will  nothing  stick  our  person  to  arraign 
In  ear  and  ear." 

(IV,  V,  87-91) 

It  is  not  the  fault  of  Claudius  that  Polonius  is  killed ;  it  is 
part  of  his  profound  policy  to  keep  Polonius  near  the  throne 
and  to  link  Hamlet  to  Polonius'  family;  and  it  is  a  mark 
of  the  wisdom  of  his  policy  that,  Polonius  murdered,  things 
go  to  pieces  at  Elsinore. 

Now  it  may  be  said  that  all  this  is  perhaps  very  true,  but 
that  Claudius  remains  a  villain,  a  smiling  hypocrite  of  ex- 
traordinary powers — perhaps  the  most  extraordinary  hypo- 
crite in  Shakespeare — but  still  a  hypocrite.  He  is  still  a 
murderer.  But  even  a  hypocritical  Claudius  is  better  than 
a  stuffed  bogeyman,  and  the  actor  who  will  present  Claudius 
as  an  intelligent  hyprocrite  will  make  vast  strides  forward 
in  interpreting  and  strengthening  the  play.  We  feel  that 
Claudius  is  a  villain  of  monstrous  proportions  largely  be- 
cause of  Hamlet's  opinion  of  him,  and  as  we  have  hitherto 
put  that  opinion  aside,  it  is  time  to  examine  it  and  to  de- 
termine how  far  we  are  justified  in  accepting  Hamlet's 
opinion  of  his  uncle  as  our  opinion. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  59' 

IV 

Hamlet's  denunciations  of  his  uncle  are  those  of  the  ghost, 
but  we  can  as  conveniently  confine  ourselves  to  the  one  as 
to  the  other.  21  They,  and  they  alone,  find  Claudius  to  be 
"an  incestuous  and  adulterate  beast,"  "incarnate  lewdness," 
"slave's  offal,"  "a  smiling,  damned  villain" — for  these  are 
the  expressions  they  use  concerning  him.  Stripped  of  all 
their  abusive  language  (and  Hamlet  is  the  only  foul-mouthed 
person  in  the  play),  we  find  the  charges  against  Claudius 
amount  to  these: 

(1)  He  is  ill-looking. 

(2)  He  is  a  coarse,  sensual  man  who  (a)  drinks  too 
much  and  (b)  leads  a  filthy  life  with  the  queen. 

(3)  He  has  robbed  young  Hamlet  of  his  crown. 

(4)  He  is  at  fault  in  his  marriage  with  Gertrude  in  that 
(a)  he  seduced  the  queen;  (b)  he  hurried  her  into  mar- 
riage; (c)  he  committed  incest  with  her. 

(5)  He  is  a  murderer  who  has  (a)  killed  his  brother 
and  (b)  attempted  the  assassination  of  Hamlet. 

It  is  my  contention  that  of  these  points  in  the  indictment 
of  Claudius  some  are  not  true ;  some  require  a  considerable 
modification  of  Hamlet's  statements;  and  some  are  open  to 
other  explanations  than  the  simple  but  totally  unsatisfac- 
tory one  that  Claudius  is  a  "satyr"  who  does  his  beastliness 
out  of  mere  love  of  evil.  Let  us  consider  the  indictment 
in  the  order  in  which  I  have  presented  it. 

(1)  Claudius  is  ill-looking.  We  have  no  indication  that 
Claudius  is  ill-looking  except  Hamlet's  unsupported  state- 
ments that  he  is  a  "bloat  king,"  a  "satyr,"  "a  mildew'd  ear." 
In  his  denunciation  of  Gertrude's  conduct  Hamlet  draws  a 
carefully  particularized  portrait  of  his  father  which  he 
contrasts  with  that  of  his  uncle,  but  he  is  totally  unable 
to  name  a  single  physical  deformity  in  Claudius,  and  takes 
refuge  in  general  abuse  (III,  iv.).  On  the  other  hand  the 
general  impression  we  have  of  Claudius  is  that  of  a  stately 
and  commanding  figure,  as  ancestrally  he  should  be.  When 
he  confronts  Laertes  and  the  mob,  he  tells  Gertrude : 


2iThis  statement  does  not  hold  for  the  charge  of  incest.     See  below,  p.   80  (T. 


60  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"Do  not  fear  [for]  our  person: 
There's  such  divinity  doth  hedge  a  king, 
That  treason  can  but  peep  to  what  it  would/'- 

(IV,  V,  119-121) 

a  silly  performance,  'did  not  Claudius  possess  a  commanding 
port  and  embody  something  of  kingly  divinity.  Lastly, 
Claudius  retains  the  devoted  love  of  Gertrude  throughout 
the  play,  even  after  Hamlet's  denunciation  of  him,  for  we 
find  her  protecting  Claudius  in  the  scene  with  Laertes ;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  think  of  Hamlet's  mother  linked  to  the  ape 
and  beast  that  Hamlet's  lurid  curses  picture  for  us.  For 
lack  of  evidence  this  charge  must  be  thrown  out  of  court. 

(2)  Claudius  is  a  coarse,  sensual  man  who  (a)  drinks 
too  much  and  (b)  leads  a  filthy  life  with  the  queen.  Let  us 
consider  the  second  charge  under  its  two  heads,  (a) 
Drunkenness  is,  as  we  know,  a  national  trait ;  and  in  bring- 
ing this  charge  Hamlet  would  also  seem  to  be  condemning 
his  father  and  his  grandfather  before  him.  But  however 
this  may  be  the  nation  is  not  so  drunken  as  Hamlet  sup- 
poses— has,  indeed,  singular  fits  of  sobriety,  since  through- 
out five  acts  of  Shakespeare's  longest  tragedy,  we  do  not 
see  a  single  drunken  man.  Claudius,  on  every  occasion, 
(how  unlike  Lepidus  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra!)  is  in  full 
possession  of  his  faculties.  We  know  of  Claudius's  drink- 
ing on  two  occasions  only:  (1)  when  he  carouses  in  honor 
of  Hamlet's  decision  to  remain  at  Elsinore;  (2)  during  the 
duel  between  Hamlet  and  Laertes.  Both  of  these  are  public 
occasions,  when  it  is  Claudius'  policy  to  flatter  the  people; 
and  so  he  drinks  and  dances.  Nowhere  in  the  play  do  we 
see,  or  hear  of,  Claudius  when  he  thinks  or  acts  or  talks 
like  a  drunken  man.     This  charge  can  not  be  substantiated. 

(b)  Hamlet  tells  us  also  that  Claudius  is  an  arrant  sen- 
sualist, and  his  picture  of  Claudius  in  the  queen's  bed  is  of  a 
sort  to  turn  the  stomach.  But  what  can  Hamlet  know  of 
the  intimacies  of  the  conjugal  chamber?  We  must  fall  back 
on  the  explanation  that  Claudius'  general  character  justi- 
fies Hamlet's  imaginative  description.  Unfortunately  for 
Hamlet,  no  one  else  in  the  play  finds  Claudius  unchaste. 
There  is  no  gossip  about  the  sensuality  of  his  relations  with 


The  King  in  Hamlet  61 

Gertrude,  such  as  there  is  about  the  sensuality  of  Antony's 
relations  with  Cleopatra.  We  have  no  account  of  other 
women  he  has  debauched,  as  we  have  a  list  of  Macbeth's 
villainies.  We  have  no  pregnant  comment  in  this  play  such 
as  Ulysses  makes  of  Cressida.  There  is  no  scene  like  that 
between  Charmian  and  the  Soothsayer,  to  illumine  as  by  a 
lightning  flash  the  licentiousness  of  the  Danish  court.  And 
the  ruler  of  that  court  throughout  the  play  never  utters  an 
unchaste  thought  or  a  licentious  jest.  On  the  contrary  his 
relations  with  Gertrude,  his  attitude  toward  Ophelia,  are 
marked  by  the  strictest  propriety.  He  does  not  kiss  his  wife, 
he  does  not  fondle  her,  he  does  not  pinch  her  cheek,  he  does 
not  paddle  in  her  neck,  he  does  not  do  any  of  the  things 
that  Hamlet  would  have  us  believe  are  second  nature  with 
him.  He  is  not,  in  short,  so  far  as  we  can  determine,  a 
"satyr,''  a  "beast,"  or  any  other  of  the  elaborate  bits  of 
abuse  which  Hamlet  uses. 

Hamlet,  on  the  other  hand,  is  filthy-minded. ^i^  His  speeches 
to  his  mother,  even  by  the  Elizabethan  standard,  are  exag- 
gerated, gross  and  insulting.  Hamlet  forces  Guildenstern 
to  a  dirty  jest.  Hamlet  abuses  the  innocent  Ophelia  in  the 
language  of  the  gutter.  Hamlet  makes  obscene  jokes  in 
the  play-scene.  Though  we  may  excuse  all  this  as  acting 
or  because  it  springs  from  the  repression  of  his  nature,  we 
must  admit,  I  think,  that  Hamlet,  mad  or  sane,  acting  or 
natural,  is  more  ready  to  bring  charges  of  this  kind  than  to 
sustain  them,  and  that  the  only  ground  for  supposing  that 
Claudius  is  sensual  must  be  his  hasty  marriage  with  Ger- 
trude— to  be  examined  later. 

These  counts  aside,  there  remains  the  matter  of  Clau- 
dius' coarseness.  Coarseness,  however,  is  a  matter  of  defi- 
nition. Hamlet  wants  to  wear  mourning  all  his  life ;  Clau- 
dius tells  him  to  take  it  off  and  go  to  work.  Hamlet  can  not 
stand  anything  that  is  not  caviare  to  the  multitude ;  the  com- 
mon people  want  a  jig  or  a  tale  of  bawdry.  Hamlet  won- 
ders how  the  grave-diggers  can  so  stultify  their  feelings  as 


^a  Of    course    part    of    the    obscenity    is     due    to    the    stage    humor    of    Hamlet's 
"madness."     He  warns   us,   too,   that  he  is  going  to   "speak  d-iggors"'   to  his  mother. 


62  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

to  sing;  the  first  clown  takes  a  professional  pride  in  know- 
ing when  bodies  will  rot.  Which  of  these  attitudes  is 
the  wiser?  For  the  purposes  of  state  Hamlet's  emotional 
metaphysics  is  as  wrong  as  Claudius'  murder.  Hamlet 
is  tender-minded,  Claudius  is  tough-minded.  Hamlet  antic- 
ipates Schopenhauer;  Claudius  is  a  precursor  of  Benjamin 
Franklin.  Romanticist  and  realist,  idealist  and  practical 
man,  dreamer  and  man  of  affairs — ^the  opposition  is  eternal, 
and  the  tragedy  consists  in  part  in  this  very  fact.  To  say 
that  Claudius  is  ''coarse"  is,  therefore,  merely  to  say  that  he 
is  not  Hamlet — fire  and  water  are  not  more  opposite.  Is 
not  this,  then,  all  that  Hamlet's  complaints,  or  the  com- 
plaints we  make  for  him  under  this  head,  amount  to  in 
the  end? 

(3)  Claudius  has  robbed  young  Hamlet  of  his  c^-ov;n. 
It  is  not  clear  how  seriously  Hamlet  thinks  of  Claudius  as 
one  who  has  robbed  him  of  his  crown,  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
he  cares  little  for  matters  of  state,  and  it  is  not  until  late 
in  the  play  that  he  makes  a  positive  statement.  After  his 
interview  with  the  ghost,  he  says  the  time  is  out  of  joint 
and  he  must  set  it  right ;  this  he  utters  aloud  for  the  benefit 
of  his  two  friends  (I,  v,  189-190)  ;  and  it  is  possible  he 
means  them  to  think  of  him  as  one  robbed  of  his  crown. 
However  this  may  be,  the  most  natural  explanation  of  Ham- 
let's madness  that  Rosencrantz  can  think  of,  and  the  one 
on  which  he  hopes  Hamlet  will  talk  freely  in  order  to  gain 
Rosencrantz  as  a  partisan,  is  the  question  of  the  crown; 
and  it  is  noticeable  that  Hamlet  neither  affirms  nor  denies 
Rosencrantz'  statement.  Indeed,  he  has  apparently  re- 
flected on  the  usefulness  of  such  a  subterfuge,  for  we  find 
him  telling  Rosencrantz  in  another  scene: 

"Sir,  I  lack  advancement," 

(III,   ii,  331) 

and  after  Rosencrantz  has  tried  to  egg  him  on  by  by  the 
ordinary  device  of  a  denial,  there  comes  the  scene  with  the 
recorders.     Hamlet  tells  Gertrude  that  Claudius  stole  the 


The  King  in  Hamlet  63 

crown,  but  he  does  not  say  or  imply  that  it  was  stolen  from 
him,  Hamlet.  He  m.eans,  I  take  it,  that  the  coronation  of 
his  uncle  was  irregular: 

"A  murderer  and  a  villain; 
A  slave  that  is  not  twentieth  part  the  tithe 
Of  your  precedent  lord;  a  vice  of  kings; 
A  cutpurse  of  the  empire  and  the  rule, 
That  from  a  shelf  the  precious  diadem  stole 
And  put  it  in  his  pocket!" 

(Ill,  iv,  96-101) 

He  tells  Horatio,  with  whom  he  is  always  frank  and  honest, 
that  Claudius 

"Popp'd  in  between  the  election  and  my  hopes;" 

(V,  ii,  65) 

but  it  is  in  the  very  last  conversation  they  have  alone,  and 
in  the  second  scene  of  the  last  act,  and  nothing  comes  of  it. 
Now  Hamlet,  as  Werder  points  out,  is  eager  to  find  some 
pretext  for  killing  Claudius,  and  it  is  largely  his  inability 
to  find  one  that  makes  him  appear  weak-willed  and  inde- 
cisive. If  there  were  any  possibility  of  using  the  robbery 
.charge  as  a  rallying  cry,  we  should,  I  think,  find  Hamlet 
employing  it.  But  he  does  not  use  it.  He  toys  with  the 
idea  through  four  acts,  trying  it  out,  so  to  speak,  and  find- 
ing it  impracticable.  It  would  seem  therefore  that  Hamlet 
himself,  for  the  most  part,  regards  the  robbery  argument 
as  thin.  But  after  Claudius  has  played  into  his  hands  with 
his  scheme  for  assassinating  the  prince,  after  Hamlet  has 
documentary  proof  of  that  plot,  and  especially  after. Laertes' 
uprising,  Hamlet  seems  to  find  the  idea  pragmatically  val- 
uable and  so,  possibly  with  some  design  of  later  developing 
the  argument,  he  sketches  for  Horatio  a  kind  of  campaign 
platform  (and  later  he  directs  Horatio  how  this  is  to  be 
used:  "tell  my  story  right"),  and  includes  the  robbery  argu- 
ment (V,  ii,  63-70) .  But  the  end  comes  unexpectedly  as  is 
usual  with  Shakespeare,  whose  characters  seldom  seem 
quite  ready  to  die,  and  we  do  not  know  what  Hamlet's 
method  of  attack  w^ould  have  been. 


64  Uninersity  of  Texas  Bulletin 

The  sole  right  that  Hamlet  can  have  to  the  crown  of  Den- 
mark is  that  he  is  the  son  of  the  late  king.  By  insisting 
that  Claudius  has  not  been  properly  elected,  he  can  seem 
to  strengthen  his  case,  but  that  argument  is  clearly  beside 
the  point.  Now  Denmark  is  not  a  hereditary  monarchy, 
or  at  least  was  not  before  Claudius'  time.  Hamlet  tells 
us  two  or  three  times  it  is  an  elective  monarchy,  and  himself 
votes  for  Fortinbras  just  before  he  dies.  Hence,  Hamlet's 
hereditary  right  is,  by  his  own  argument,  swept  away.  The 
only  remaining  plea  is  that,  since  Claudius  failed  to  go 
through  the  form  of  an  election,  the  claims  of  Hamlet  as  a 
candidate  have  not  been  properly  considered.  This  is  the 
statement  he  makes  to  Horatio :  Claudius  has  ruined  his 
"hopes."  But  the  rights  of  a  candidate  for  the  presidency 
of  the  United  States  do  not  give  him  any  right  to  the  presi- 
dency, and  no  more  do  Hamlet's  wrongs  as  a  possible  candi- 
date for  the  Danish  crown  entitle  him  to  be  king  in  El- 
sinore. 

Hamlet's  inability  to  make  out  a  good  case  for  the  crown 
is  again  the  result,  it  seems  to  me,  of  Claudius'  extraordi- 
nary shrewdness.  As  I  say,  Claudius  was  apparently  never 
"elected"  to  the  crown.  Why  not?  Possibly  upon  the  sud- 
den death  of  old  Hamlet,  and  in  the  serious  condition  of 
affairs,  an  election  was  inadvisable.  Possibly  the  marriage 
in  some  way  satisfied  the  law.^^  Possibly  Claudius  simply 
mounted  the  throne.  But  at  any  rate,  Claudius  could  be 
"elected"  whenever  he  chose  to  be,  Hamlet  or  no  Hamlet; 
there  is  no  doubt  of  it,  for  the  court  unanimously  approve 
of  him  and  of  the  marriage  (he  has  "freely"  consulted 
their  "better  wisdoms'-'  (I,  ii,  15)  in  the  matter) .  Yet,  when 
it  would  be  so  easy  to  do  so,  he  does  not  seem  in  the  least 
uneasy  because  he  has  not  been  legally  elected  king.  Why 
does  he  not  strengthen  his  position  and  shut  Hamlet's 
mouth? 

Claudius,  with  the  tacit  consent  of  the  court,  is  apparently 
trying  to  change  Denmark  from  an  elective  to  a  hereditary 


^^Note  that  Gertrude  is  the   "imperial  jointress"    of  the  state    (I,   ii,   9) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  65 

monarchy  with  a  view  to  strengthening  the  state.^^  With 
that  end  in  view  he  publicly  announces  that  Hamlet  is  his 
heir.  Hamlet,  as  Rosencrantz  points  out,  can  not  complain. 
Popular  sentiment  is  satisfied.  If  Hamlet  argues  for  the 
elective  system,  Claudius  is  sure  to  be  chosen.^*  If  he 
argues  that  under  the  hereditary  system  he,  and  not  Clau- 
dius, should  rule,  he  becomes  a  law-breaker  like  his  uncle. 
But  under  the  hereditary  system  Hamlet  is  absolutely  sure 
of  his  crown.  He  is  more  nearly  certain  of  it  than  he  was 
under  his  father.  That  is  why  he  is  baffled  in  his  struggle 
with  Claudius,  and  that  is  why  the  robbery  argument  is 
too  thin  for  serious  use.  Claudius  is  like  a  glassy  wall  up 
which  Hamlet  struggles  to  climb  without  footing. 

(4)  Claudius  is  at  fault  in  his  marriage  with  Gertrude 
in  that  (a)  he  seduced  the  queen;  (b)  he  hurried  her  into 
marriage;  (c)  he  committed  incest  tvith  her.  Hamlet  brings 
more  cogent  charges  against  his  uncle.  Claudius,  he  says, 
has  "whored"  his  mother,  married  her  precipitately,  and 
lives  in  incest  with  her. 

It  is  obvious  that  much  will  depend  upon  the  sincerity 
of  the  attachment  between  Gertrude  and  Claudius.  If  their 
love  has  in  it  something  fine  and  good,  it  will  prove  like  all 
great  passions  to  have  extenuation  in  it,  or  at  any  rate,  the 
spectator  will  be  more  ready  to  pity  than  to  condemn.  If, 
as  Hamlet  claims,  their  attachment  is  on  the  one  hand  a 
low,  dirty  intrigue,  and  on  the  other,  a  sensual  sty,  we  may 
as  well  give  up  the  case  as  hopeless. 

Professor  Kittredge  would  have  us  believe  that  we  are 
dealing  with  a  case  of  guilty  passion.  The  tragedy  of  the 
house  of  Hamlet  springs,  he  says,  out  of  the  fatal  love  of 
Gertrude  and  Claudius.  It  is  for  her  that  Claudius  has 
murdered  his  brother.     It  is  she  and  not  the  crown  he  has 


^Shakespeare  could  hardly  do  otherwise.  The  one  elective  monarchy  he  knew  was 
Poland— 7a  by-word  for  disorderly  government.  The  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  the 
enemy  of  England.  Hence,  the  change  to  a  more  stable  government  would  naturally 
take  the  direction  of  the  hereditary  form.  That  is  why,  among  other  reasons, 
Claudius  is  so  insistent  on  the  divine  right  of  kings.  See  on  Poland  the  chapters 
from  Fynes  Moryson's  Itinerary,  ed.  by  Charles  Hughes,  entitled  Shakespeare's 
Europe,    especially   p.    77.      London,    1903.     Note   the   hatred   for    "Poperie." 

^It  is  almost  superfluous  to  say  that  the  people  are  to  have  no  voice  in  the  elec- 
tion— something   they   complain   of   in  the    Laertes   rebellion. 


66  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

aimed  at,  and  Professor  Kittredge  points  for  proof  to  the 
ascending  climax  in  Claudius'  soliloquy: 

"those  effects  for  which  I  did  the  murder, 
My  crown,  mine  own  ambition  and  my  queen." 

(Ill,  iii,  54-55) 

If  we  did  not  know  hov/  the  marriage  came  about,  we 
should  agree,  I  think,  that  Gertrude  and  Claudius  (except 
to  Hamlet)  are,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  play,  the  picture 
of  a^  devoted  and  self-respecting  couple.  The  genuine  cour- 
tesy of  the  king's  public  references  to  his  wife,  the  deference 
of  each  to  the  other,  notable  in  their  first  interview  with 
Guildenstern  and  Rosencrantz  (II,  ii),  the  concern  of  the 
queen  in  the  play  scene: 

"How  fares  my  lord?" 

(Ill,   ii,   261) 

a  prelude  to  her  plaintive 

"O  Hamlet,  thou  hast  cleft  my  heart  in  twain!" 

(Ill,  iv,  156) 

and  above  all  the  way  the  two  cling  to  each  other  amid  their 
sea  of  troubles,  from  the  perplexity  of  the  king's 

"0  Gertrude,  Gertrude," 

(IV,  V,  74) 

to  the  queen's  anxious  attempt  to  save  her  husband  from 
Laertes : 

"But  not  by  him!"— 

(IV,  V,  125) 

all  these  are  unmistakable,  and  are  so  many  direct  denials 
to  Hamlet's  furious  and  unseemly  abuse.  And  this  passion 
seems  at  one  time  to  rise  to  the  height  of  great  pathos  when, 
in  the  last  scene,  the  helpless  king  cries  out  with  the  simplic- 
ity of  all  high  tragedy : 

"It  is  the  poison'd  cup;  it  is  too  late." 

(V,  ii,  284) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  67 

At  any  rate  the  relation  between  the  two  is  not  the  nasty 
affair  of  too  much  of  Hamlet's  thinking — as,  indeed,  it 
would  be  superfluous  to  point  out,  were  we  not  all  hypno- 
tized by  the  modern  versions  of  the  play. 

But  1  do  not  think  we  can  adopt  the  Kittredge  explana- 
tion unreservedly.  Human  motives  are  very  mixed,  ancj. 
life,  as  George  Moore  says,  never  comes  twice  in  the  same 
\v«y.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  while  the  sincerity  and  depth 
of  the  queen's  attachment  to  Claudius  is  indubitable,  sur- 
viving as  it  does  the  most  fearful  sorrows  to  sink  at  last, 
strangely  enough,  in  a  storm  of  accident  and  revelation  ia 
which  Gertrude  alone  never  finds  out  the  truth,-^  the  at- 
tachment of  Claudius  to  Gertrude  is  another  matter.  I 
should  say  that  his  love  has  sincerity,  but  no  depth.  For 
in  the  lines  to  which  Professor  Kittredge  refers,  though 
they  may,  indeed,  rise  to  a  climax  on  "queen" — a  debatable 
point — Claudius  yet  enumerates  the  effects  of  the  murder 
entirely  in  their  political  aspects : 

"My  crown,  mine  own  ambition  and  my  queen," 

that  is,  my  office,  my  desire  of  attaining  (or  retaining)  it, 
and  my  securest  hold  upon  that  office.  And  after  Claudius 
has  uttered  the  tragic  cry  I  have  quoted ;  after  he  knows  the 
queen  is  surely  dying,  he  yet  watches  the  duel! 

"I  do  not  think't," 

(V,  ii,  286) 

he  says  in  answer  to  Laertes'  boast,  and  when  Hamlet 
wounds  Laertes,  he  directs  the  attendants  to 

"Part  them;  they  are  incensed." 

(V,  ii,  294) 


^°The  queen  cries  out: 

"No,  no,  the  drink,   the  drink, — O   my  dear   Hamlet, — 
The  drink,  the  drink  !  I  am  poisoned !" 

(V,  ii,  301-302) 
Unless  she  is  thinking  of  her  first  husband — something  I  very  much  doubt — ^this 
reads  to  me  as  though,  having  convinced  herself  in  the  closet  scene  that  Hamlet  is 
mad,  she  now  reproaches  Hamlet  with  poisoning  her.  Has  he  not  attempted  the 
life  of  the  king?  Driven  his  beloved  mad,  and  killed  her?  At  any  rate,  it  is  sig- 
nificant  that  she   never    suspects   Claudius. 


68  University  of  Texas  Bulletiyi 

Seven  lines  after  ''the  Queen  falls,"  he  is  cool-witted  enough 
to  try  to  conceal  what  has  happened : 

"She  swounds  to  see  them  bleed." 

(V,  ii,  299) 

And  when  Hamlet  has  stabbed  him,  his  last  thought  is  of 
his  own  life: 

"0,  yet  defend  me,  friends;  I  am  but  hurt." 

(V,  11,  316) 

His  whole  interest  is  in  the  outcome  of  the  plot,  not  in  Ger- 
trude. In  contrast  to  the  single-hearted  devotion  of  the 
queen,  is  this  tragic  passion  ? 

When  Antony  is  (falsely)  informed  of  Cleopatra's  death, 
he  drops  all  earthly  concerns: 

"Unarm,  Eros,  the  long  day's  task  Is  done, 
And  we  must  sleep .  . . 
I  will  overtake  thee,  Cleopatra,  and 
Weep  for  my  pardon." 

When  Othello  has,  like  Claudius,  killed  the  thing  he  loved, 
we  read, 

"I  klss'd  thee  ere  I  klll'd  thee ;  no  way  but  this. 
Killing  myself  to  die  upon  a  kiss." 

When  Romeo  sees  Juliet  dead : 

"O,  true  apothecary; 
Thy  drugs  are  quick. — Thus  with  a  kiss  I  die." 

Such  a  man  as  Macbeth  can  say  upon  the  news  of  his  wife's 
death : 

"I  'gin  to  be  a-weary  of  the  sun, 
And  wish  the  estate  o'  the  world  were  now  undone." 

Even  Troilus  has  a  far-off  glimmer  of  this  magic : 


The  King  in  Hamlet  69 

"0  Cressid!  O  false  Cressid!  false,  false,  false! 
Let  all  untruths  stand  by  thy  stained  name, 
And  they  seem  glorious." 

The  noise  and  clamor  of  the  world's  affairs  sound  as  loudly 
in  all  these  plays,  and  the  end  of  all  but  one  is  as  rapid 
as  that  of  Hamlet]  but  in  each  case  there  is  no  doubt  that 
we  are  dealing  with  tragic  passion,  whereas  Claudius  utters 
no  such  cry.  His  thought  is  of  himself  and  of  his  throne. 
The  truth  to  nature  and  the  poignancy  of 

"It  is  the  poison'd  cup;  it  is  too  late" 

arise,  indeed,  from  the  very  fact  that  a  supremely  skillful 
plotter  here  is  foiled.  He  watches  the  duel  that  may  yet 
leave  him  secure  upon  his  throne.  He  could  never  under- 
stand Antony: 

"Kingdoms  are  clay;  our  dungy  earth  alike 
Feeds  beast  as  man:  the  nobleness  of  life 
Is,  to  do  thus',  when  such  a  mutual  pair. 
And  such  a  twain  can  do't." 

Instead  of  the  world  well  lost,  his  eye  is  fixed  upon  Den- 
mark : 

"0,  yet  defend  me,  friends;  I  am  but  hurt." 

What  are  we  to  make  of  him  ?  Is  it  but  another  proof  that 
Claudius  is  a  conscienceless  villain?  Has  Hamlet's  "good 
mother"  wasted  her  soul's  affection  on  a  scoundrel  and  a 
cad?  Have  the  affections  of  the  court  been  fixed  upon  a 
contemptible  and  petty  desperado?  Is  Hamlet,  after  all, 
right,  and  is  every  one  else  (including  Professor  Kittredge) 
mad  ?     I  do  not  think  so. 

The  passion  of  Gertrude  is,  indeed,  tragic  passion — in- 
tense, fatal,  overwhelming ;  but  the  same  is  not  true  of  Clau- 
dius. Neither  does  his  apparent  unconcern  at  the  queen's 
death  mean  that  he  is  a  mere  scoundrel.  Claudius  gives 
Gertrude  all  that  he  can.  He  has  for  her  a  genuine  affec- 
tion. It  is  even  love.  But  it  is  not  passion;  and  in  him 
"the  quick,  unreasoning  heart"  is  strictly  subordinated  to 


70  University  of  Texas  Bulletin     ' 

"the  cool  and  reasoning  brain."  There  are  degrees  in  affec- 
tion; Cupid  but  claps  some  on  the  shoulder;  and  men  have 
died,  as  that  wise  young  woman,  Rosalind,  says,  from  time 
to  time  and  worms  have  eaten  them,  but  not  for  love.  Clau- 
dius loves  Gertrude,  but  only  as  his  nature  permits  him, 
and  he  is  incapable  of  feeling  a  grand  passion. 

The  motives  for  the  marriage  are  mixed — passion  on  Ger- 
trude's part,  affection  on  the  part  of  Claudius,  and  not  a 
little  policy.  Their  love  was  guilty  in  its  beginning,  and  it 
has  led  to  crime:  to  adultery  before  old  Hamlet's  death, 
and  to  the  murder  of  old  Hamlet.  In  the  first  instance 
both  are  clearly  guilty,  though  Gertrude's  adoration  for 
Claudius  tends  to  humanize  her  and,  in  dramatic  terms,  to 
make  her  "sympathetic."  In  the  second  count  Claudius 
alone  is  guilty.  Gertrude's  passion  is  her  tragic  fault;  but 
the  murder  of  his  brother  is  the  tragic  fault  of  Claudius, 
and  back  of  the  love-affair,  back  of  the  murder,  was  ambi- 
tion. They  are  not,  it  is  clear,  fellow-conspirators  like  Mac- 
beth and  Lady  Macbeth;  they  are  not  light-o'-loves  likes 
Cressida  and  Troilus ;  they  are  not  splendid  lovers  like 
Cleopatra  and  Antony. 

Because  the  love  of  Gertrude  for  Claudius  is  in  Hamlet 
the  beginning  of  evil,  people  jump,  it  is  true,  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  Gertrude,  in  addition  to  abandoning  her  first  hus- 
band, was  accessory  to  his  murder.  This  conviction  is 
strengthened  by  the  play-scene  as  that  is  usually  staged; 
for  modern  versions  gratuitously  make  the  Player-Queen 
beckon  Lucianus,  the  poisoner,  to  his  task.  There  is  abso- 
lutely no  justification  in  Shakespeare  for  the  pantomime 
thus  enacted.  The  text  is  clear.  The  Player-Queen  goes 
out  at 

"And  never  come  mischance  between  us  twain!" 

(Ill,  ii,  223) 

Lucianus  enters  alone,  speaks,  but  makes  no  reference  to  the 
Player-Queen,  and  poisons  the  Player-King.  At  this  point 
the  play  is  interrupted  but  the  dumb-show  tells  all ;  we  read 


The  King  in  Hamlet  71 

"The  Queen  returns;  finds  the  King  dead,  and 
makes  passionate  action.  The  Poisoner,  with  some 
two  or  three  Mutes,  comes  in  again,  seeming  to  la- 
ment with  her.  The  dead  body  is  carried  away.  The 
Poisoner  wooes  the  Queen  with  gifts;  she  seems 
loath  and  unwilling  awhile,  but  in  the  end  accepts 
his  love." 

Obviously  there  is  not  the  shghtest  excuse  for  making  the 
Player-Queen  a  murderess,  but  we  are  so  occupied  with 
making  Claudius  and  Gertrude  monsters  of  wickedness 
that  we  change  the  very  image  which  Hamlet  (and  Shake- 
speare) wrought !  For  if  Hamlet  believes  that  his  mother 
is  a  murderess,  and  if  he  has  "doctored''  The  Murder  of 
Gonzago  so  that  it  shall  picture  the  assassination  of  Hamlet 
as  accurately  as  possible,  he  has  made  a  curious  botch  of  it ; 
and  if  he  has  merely  chosen  that  play  as  coming  near  to  the 
assassination,  without  actually  picturing  the  deed  in  all  its 
circumstances,  he  has  been  clumsy,  to  say  the  least.  We 
must  suppose  that  The  Murder  of  Gonzago  faithfully  relates 
the  deed  as  it  was  done ;  else  the  king  can  not  be  frightened 
with  false  fire. 

There  is  not  a  scintilla  of  evidence  to  show  that  Gertrude 
is  a  murderess.  The  ghost  does  not  make  such  a  charge. 
His  complaint,  so  far  as  Gertrude  is  concerned,  is  that  her 
affections  have  turned  to  so  poor  a  thing  as  Claudius.  Nor 
does  Hamlet  make  the  charge.  He  says,  it  is  true,  at  the 
opening  of  the  closet  scene, 

"A  bloody  deed!  almost  as  bad,  good  mother, 
As.  kill  a  king,  arid  marry  with  his  brother," 

(III,  iv,  28-29) 

but  Gertrude's  astonishment  is  so  genuine  and  unforced 
that  the  prince  never  reverts  to  this  topic,  despite  the  fact 
that  he  is  desperately  in  need  of  the  evidence  he  might  wring 
from  the  frightened  woman, — if  he  did  not  clearly  perceive 
that  there  is  no  evidence  to  wring.  Not  only  is  Gertrude 
no  murderess;  there  is  not  a  scintilla  of  evidence  to  show 
that  she  knows  that  old  Hamlet  was  murdered,  much  less 
that  Claudius  killed  him.     Royal  conspirators  like  Macbeth 


72  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

and  Lady  Macbeth  continually  turn  back  to  their  common 
crimes  as  cardinal  points  in  their  policy,  but  the  only  point 
to  which  Gertrude  and  Claudius  together  revert  is  their 
love-relationship.  They  never  speak  of  their  mutual  crime 
— meaning  the  murder — for  the  sufficient  reason  that  the 
guilt  of  that  murder  is  sole  and  singular.  If  Shakespeare 
meant  to  paint  another  pair  of  royal  assassins,  he  has  been 
singularly  clumsy  about  it. 

In  fine,  the  reason  for  the  ghost's  warning, 

"howsoever  thou  pursuest  this  act, 
Taint  not  thy  mind,  nor  let  thy  soul  contrive 
Against  thy  mother  aught :  leave  her  to  heaven," 

(I,  V,  84-86) 

is  that  Hamlet  may  not,  that  the  audience  may  not,  jump 
to  the  conclusion  that  Gertrude  is  an  accomplice  in  the 
killing.  The  ghost's  language  indicates,  so  to  speak,  the 
theological  nature  of  her  fault;  it  is  a  sin  rather  than  a 
crime ;  the  sin  of  adultery,  not  the  crime  of  murder.  This 
is  what  Gertrude  acknowledges  it  to  be: 

"To  my  sick  soul,  as  sin's  true  nature  is/'^e 

(IV,  V,  17) 

she  says,  for  her  fault  is  against  the  ecclesiastical,  more 
strongly  than  against  the  civil,  code.  Hence  she.  is  to  be 
left  '*to  heaven"  and  to 

"those  thorns  that  in  her  bosom  lodge, 
To  prick  and  sting  her," 

(I,  V,  87-88) 

whereas  Claudius,  being  of  the  world,  is  to  be  punished  of 
the  world : 


'Revenge  his  foul  and  most  unnatural  murder," 

(I,  V,  25) 


^Claudius   never  speaks   of  the  murder  as   a   "sin"    but  as   a   "fault,"   an    "offense, 
just  as   Macbeth   never  uses   "sin"   to   designate  the   murder   of  Duncan. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  73 

says  the  ghost,  and  Hamlet,  seeing  his  uncle  at  prayer, 
reasons  not  improperly: 

".  .  .  Am  I  then  revenged, 
To  take  him  in  the  purging  of  his  soul, 
When  he  is  fit  and  seasoned  for  his  passage? 
No. 
When  he  is . .  . 

...  about  some  act 
That  has  no  relish  of  salvation  in't ; 
Then  trip  him  up,  that  his  heels  may  kick  at  heaven 
And  that  his  soul  may  be  as  damn'd  and  black 
As  hell,  whereto  it  goes," 

(III,  iii,  84-95) 

whereas,  ten  minutes  later,  he  can  tell  his  mother: 

"Confess  yourself  to  heaven; 
Repent  what's  past,  avoid  what  is  to  come." 

(Ill,  iv,  149-150) 

The  charge  that  Claudius  "whored"  Hamlet's  mother  is 
true  only  in  the  sense  of  guilty  love,  not  in  the  sense  that 
he  has  also  made  of  her  a  criminal.  This  love  is  deeper 
on  Gertrude's  part  than  on  that  of  Claudius,  and  has  ac- 
cordingly the  extenuation  of  great  passion,  as  Hamlet  feels 
himself : 

"That  monster,  custom,  who  all  sense  doth  eat. 
Of  habits  devil,  is  angel  yet  in  this, 
That  to  the  use  of  actions  fair  and  good 
He  likewise  gives  a  frock  or  livery. 
That  aptly  is  put  on.     Refrain  tonight. 
And  that  shall  lend  a  kind  of  easiness 
To  the  next  abstinence;  and  the  next  more  easy; 
For  lise  almost  can  change  the  stamp  of  nature." 

(Ill,  iv,  161-168) 

Hamlet  also  complains  of  the  haste  of  his  mother's  mar- 
riage. Even  before  he  knows  of  the  murder,  his  sense  of 
propriety  has  been  deeply  wounded : 


74  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"within  a  month; 
Ere  yet  the  salt  of  most  unrighteous  tears 
Had  left  the  flushing  of  her  galled  eyes, 
She  married," 

(I,  ii,  153-156) 

and  he  sadly — if  vaguely — concludes, 

"It  is  not,  nor  it  cannot  come  to  good." 

(I,  ii,  158) 

If  Claudius  is  the  shrewd  and  crafty  plotter  that,  on  the> 
lowest  plane,  he  seems  to  be,  it  looks  as  if  here  he  had 
failed.  Why  should  he  arouse  Hamlet's  suspicions  when 
a  little  delay  would  serve  to  allay  them?  One  can  not  but 
be  struck  by  the  apparent  foolhardiness  of  the  king's  be- 
havior. He  seems  with  brazen  effrontery  to  court  destruc- 
tion and  invite  scandal,  as  Gertrude  tells  us : 

"I  doubt  it  is  no  other  but  the  main ; 
His  father's  death  and  our  o'erhasty  marriage." 

(II,  ii,  56-57) 

Even  the  taciturn  Horatio  makes  one  of  his  few  comments 
on  public  affairs  by  dryly  observing  of  the  marriage  and  the 
funeral, 


"Indeed,  my  lord,  it  followed  hard  upon.' 

(] 


179) 


A  tyro  in  deceit  (it  would  seem)  could  manage  to  weep  less 
than  Gertrude,  or  to  wait  longer  than  Claudius.  An  ama- 
teur in  conspiracy  would  postpone  the  wedding  at  least  until 
a  decent  interval  had  elapsed  and  murmur  had  died  down. 
That  is  precisely  what  an  amateur  would  do,  and  precisely 
why  Claudius  does  not  do  it.  For  it  is  to  be  remarked  that 
all  the  comment  about  the  hasty  marriage  comes  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  play.  Of  all  the  pretexts  Hamlet  might  find 
for  quarreling  with  his  uncle,  the  hasty  marriage,  implying 
as  it  does  bad  faith  at  the  best  and  treachery  at  the  worst, 
would  seem  to  be  the  most  plausible ;  Gertrude  fears  gossip 
about  it;  and  yet  Hamlet  not  only  does  not  use  it,  but  when, 


The  King  in  Hamlet  75 

at  the  conclusion  of  the  piece,  he  summarizes  for  Horatio 
his  grievances  against  his  uncle,  the  theme  of  the  hasty 
marriage  is  slurred  over  in  his  catalog ! 

"Does  it  not,  think'st  thee,  stand  me  now  upon — 
He  that  hath  kill'd  my  king,  and  whored  my  mother ; 
Popp'd  in  between  the  election  and  tny  hopes ; 
Thrown  out  his  angle  for  my  proper  life, 
And  with  such  cozenage — -is't  not  perfect  conscience, 
To  quit  him  with  this  arm?" 

(V,  ii,  62-68) 

What  are  we  to  make  of  the  theory  that  Claudius  is  playing 
into  Hamlet's  hands  when  we  see  that  Hamlet  fails  to  em- 
ploy the  apparent  advantage  which  has  been  given  him? 
What^  indeed,  except  that  Claudius  is  again  too  shrewd  for 
his  nephew?     Hamlet's  mouth  is  shut. 

Claudius  foresees  every  contingency  except  supernatural 
interference.  He,  and  he  alone,  has  done  the  murder.  No 
one  suspects  him,  not  even  Gertrude.  This  secret  is  safe. 
But  the  secret  of  the  love  affair  can  not  be  safe.  Two  are 
involved ;  the  going  and  comings  of  the  lovers  obviously  can 
not  be  concealed,  or  at  best,  can  be  concealed  for  a  short 
time  only,  after  which — scandal.     What  is  he  to  do? 

Let  us  suppose  that  Claudius  postpones  the  marriage  to  a 
time  that  will  seem  proper  and  decent — two  months,  six 
months,  a  year.  Criticism  will  be  stopped,  it  is  true,  but 
gossip  will  begin.  Gertrude  adores  him.  He  can  not  well 
stay  away  from  her.  Her  attitude  will  cause  comment. 
She  will  be,  besides,  in  torments  of  conscience  which  he  can 
not  control.  His  own  freedom  of  action  will  be  curtailed. 
Does  any  one  doubt  that  in  this  event  the  names  of  the 
present  king,  and  the  late  queen  of  Denmark  will  be  in 
everybody's  mouth;  that  suspicion  will  rise  into  certainty; 
that  certainty  will  become  curious  and  turn  back  to  the 
origin  of  this  public  love  affair;  that  forgotten  incidents 
will  be  revived  and  imaginary  incidents,  invented,  until 
Hamlet,  far  from  lacking  cause  for  rebellion  will  be  hard 
put  to  it  to  find  a  pretext  for  quiescence,  and  Denmark,  sore 
pressed  by  her  enemies,  will  be  embarrassed  at  home  by 


76  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

division  among  her  rulers,  and  by  a  hideous  and  ugly  scan- 
dal? Does  anyone  doubt  that  this  will  follow  the  post- 
ponement of  the  marriage  as  surely  as  the  night  the  day? 
Has  not  young  Hamlet,  in  the  actual  situation,  become  sus- 
picious in  less  than  a  month?  (I,  ii)  Can  Claudius  expect 
that  Gertrude  will  dissemble — Gertrude,  who  hung  on  old 
Hamlet 

"As  if  increase  of  appetite  had  grown 
By  what  it  fed  on," 

(I,  ii,  144-145) 

who  was  next 

"Like  Niobe.  all  tears" 

(I,   ii,   149) 

(and  Hamlet  never  questions  the  sincerity  of  his  mother's 
emotions,  wondering  merely  at  their  frank  and  constant 
change — "Frailty,  thy  name  is  woman"),  and  who  conceals 
matters  so  poorly  that  the  young  prince  employs  fifteen  lines 
of  blank  verse  and  sarcasm  to  impress  upon  her  the  elemen- 
tary necessity  of  secrecy  so  far  as  he  is  concerned — how 
long  could  Gertrude  act  a  part  with  her  lover  near  her,  and 
both  under  the  great  white  light  that  beats  upon  a  throne? 

The  king  takes  the  better  and  the  wiser  course.  If  the 
marriage  be  promptly  concluded,  scandal  is  stopped.  Gos- 
sip may  toy  awhile  (as  it  does)  with  the  theme,  but  the 
thing  done,  all  mouths  are  sealed.  When  there  is  no  living 
impediment  to  such  a  marriage,  people  do  not  inquire  too 
curiously  into  the  past  of  the  couple.  And  if  they  do  in- 
quire; if  they  discover  that  in  its  origins  the  passion  of 
Gertrude  for  Claudius,  was  adulterous — what  then?  Who 
now  can  complain?  Who  is  injured?  Old  Hamlet  is  dead. 
The  lovers  have  taken  the  one  recognized  step  for  legiti- 
mizing their  affection.  Young  Hamlet,  by  this  expeditious 
marriage,  is  neatly  placed  in  the  predicament  of  condemning 
the  desire  of  guilty  lovers  to  wash  away  their  guilt  and  reg- 
ularize their  union ! 

We  have  forgotten  under  the  impact  of  such  modern  plays 
as  Hindle  Wakes  and  The  Eldest  Son  how  completely  the 


The  King  in  Hamlet  77 

convention  was  established  in  Elizabethan  times  and  through- 
out dramatic  history  until  our  own  day,  that  marriage  is 
the  sufficient  answer  to  the  accusation  of  immorality  in  sex- 
ual matters;  or  rather,  if  we  do  not  forget  this  fact  (wit- 
ness the  movies) ,  we  do  not  appreciate  the  force  with  which 
it  stopped  discussion  in  Shakespeare's  age.  At  the  conclu- 
sion of  Measure  for  Measure,  for  instance,  the  despicable 
Claudio  is  thought  to  be  sufficiently  rehabilitated  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world  (and  the  audience)  when  the  duke  commands 
him  to  take  Mariana  home  "and  marry  her  instantly."  As 
for  Lucio  in  the  same  play, 

"Proclaim  it,  provost,  round  about  the  city — 
If  any  woman  [has  been]  wrong'd  by  this  lewd  fellow, 
...  let  her  appear 

And  he  shall  marry  her ;  the  nuptial  finish'd, 
Let  him  be  whipp'd  and  hang'd." 

But  everybody  is  satisfied  when,  upon  protest,  the  duke 
continues : 

"Upon  mine  honour,  thou  shalt  marry  her. 
.  . .  and  therewithal 
Remit  thy  other  forfeits." 

The  conclusion  of  AlVs  Well  That  Ends  Well  is  stuffed  with 
similar  sentiments.  The  Hero-plot  of  Much  Ado  About 
Nothing  turns  on  an  equally  significant  interpretation  of 
marriage  and  sexual  guilt.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  full 
of  it.  So  are  others,  notably  Heywood.  Shakespeare 
adopts  the  most  common  stage  device  in  the  world  to  make 
his  lovers  in  this  play  seem  wholly  virtuous;  increasing 
thereby  the  breathlessness  of  the  plot  and  Hamlet's  per- 
plexity ;  and  it  is  no  wonder,  in  view  of  the  promptness  with 
which  Claudius  avails  himself  of  this  recognized  and  unde- 
batable  device  for  exhibiting,  as  it  were,  repentance,  and 
making  reparation  to  the  woman  in  the  case  (supposing 
him  ever  to  be  charged  with  guilt  in  this  love  affair) — it 
is  no  wonder  that  Hamlet,  helpless  before  the  fact  of  the 
marriage  and  the  general  acquiescence  in  it,  cries  out : 


78  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"The  spirit  that  I  have  seen 
May  be  the  devil ;   .  . . 

. . .  yea,  and  perhaps 
Out  of  my  weakness  and  my  melancholy, 
As  he  is  very  potent  with  such  spirits, 
Abuses  me  to  damn  me.     I'll  have  grounds 
More  relative  than  this.     The  play's  the  thing 
Wherein  I'll  catch  the  conscience  of  the  king." 

(II,   ii,    594-601) 

Other  considerations  being  for  the  moment  waived,  what 
can  the  most  rigid  casuist  desire  that  Claudius  and  Ger- 
trude do  not? 

There  is,  however,  another  respect  which  makes  an  im- 
mediate marriage  not  only  morally  desirable,  but  practically 
expedient.  This  is  clearly  the  international  situation.  Upon 
the  death  of  the  late  king  and  the  accession  of  Claudius,  a 
man  unknown  outside  of  Denmark,  the  nations  of  the  north 
have  sought  immediately  to  test  the  mettle  of  the  new  ruler, 
placing  Denmark  in  great  peril.  If  Claudius  does  not  marry 
Gertrude,  there  are  obviously  three  aspirants  to  the  Danish 
crown:  Claudius,  who  has  seized  the  power;  Gertrude,  the 
widow  of  the  last  king ;  and  Hamlet,  who  considers  that  he 
is  a  candidate  for  the  election.  Be  they  ever  so  amicable 
at  the  start,  a  quarrel  must  result.  Three  mutually  hostile 
parties  will  form  in  the  court  and  the  nation.  Foreign 
peoples  will  have  a  golden  opportunity  to  play  one  faction 
against  the  other,  or  to  seize  the  power  as  Fortinbras  act- 
ually does — when,  between  two  of  these  parties,  Claudius 
and  Hamlet,  the  crown  comes  tumbling  into  his  lap.  What 
is  politically  expedient?  What  is  the  best  political  moral- 
ity? Is  it  not  a  prompt  union  of  the  potential  rivals  and 
a  common  front  against  the  enemy?  Fortunately  two  of 
the  three  are  already  on  terms  of  intimacy,  and  Claudius 
promptly — and  wisely — marries  the  widow  of  the  last  king, 
at  the  same  time  seeking  to  attach  the  third  party  to  him 
by  public  proclamation:  Hamlet  is  to  be  his  heir.  Laying 
this  solution  before  the  court,  or  at  least  that  part  of  it 
which  pertains  to  Gertrude,  he  receives  their  hearty  sup- 
port; and  takes  occasion  at  the  first  public  ceremony  since 
the  funeral,  tactfully  to  announce  the  event,  to  deprecate 


The  King  in  Hamlet  79 

the  seeming  slight  to  his  brother's  memory,  and  to  indicate 
the  cause  for  haste:  the  state,  "by  our  late  dear  brother's 
death"  must  not  become  ''disjoint  and  out  of.  frame"  as 
Fortinbras  fondly  believes  it  will.^^ 

Under  this  count,  wherein  is  Claudius  guilty?  It- is  use- 
less to  argue  that  a  high  and  fine  nature  in  Claudius's  place 
would  have — what  shall  we  say?  Confessed,  and  gone  into 
a  monastery?  Denmark  would  have  gone  to  ruin.  It  is 
useless  to  argue  that  a  high  and  fine  nature,  in  Gertrude's 
place,  would  have  renounced  her  love  and  gone  on  mourning 
for  a  man  she  cared  nothing  about.  That  is  to  condemn  her 
to  life-long  hypocrisy.  The  world  is  not  run  by  motives 
that  are  ten  feet  high.  The  high  and  fine  thing  is  a  prompt 
marriage,  whereby  Denmark  is  saved  and  Gertrude  be- 
comes, as  the  phrase  goes,  an  honest  woman ;  and  then  a  long 
penitence  and  reform — such  contrition  as  we  see  beginning 
to  work  in  both  before  the  play  ends.  Human  motives  are 
tangled;  but  the  life  of  a  ruler  is  not  his  own,  as  Shake- 
speare's histories  and  tragedies  so  clearly  show,  and  though 
Claudius  is  guilty  enough  in  other  ways,  it  takes  an  abso- 
lutist of  the  type  of  Hamlet  to  find  a  distinct  moral  wrong 
in  the  fact  that  Claudius  married  Gertrude  a  month  after 
the  funeral.  The  act,  at  the  most,  is  questionable;  it  is, 
however,  defensible,  and  from  two  or  three  points  of  view, 
it  is  absolutely  to  be  justified. 

We  might  wish  that  Gertrude  did  not  love  Claudius,  but 
she  does.  We  might  wish  (with  Hamlet)  that  she  loved 
her  husband,  but  she  does  not.  We  might  wish  (with  the 
casuist)  that  she  truly  mourned  for  him,  but  she  does  not, 
and  there  is  no  way  to  compel  her.  We  might  even  wish 
that  she  renounce  the  world,  but  none  of  Shakespeare's 
women,  though  occasionally  they  talk  of  so  doing,  are  of 
this  type.  Shakespeare  knew  that  renunciation  is  usually 
to  dodge  the  human  problem,  not  to  struggle  with  it,  and 
in  the  present  instance  especially,  to  renounce  the  world 
would  be  to  equivocate  and  fail.  Gertrude,  like  Claudius, 
is  a  ruler,  and  her  life  is  not  all  her  own.^* 


^Disjoint   is    admirably   and   particularly    chosen   to    describe    the    possibility    ahead. 

^Coriolanus,  Brutus,  and  Antony,  to  go  no  further,  are  in  the  same  predicament ; 

what  is  privately  desirable  can  not  be  made  to  square  with  what  is  publicly  a  duty. 


80  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

Hamlet  also  charges  that  the  marriage  is  incestuous. 
Since  the  contracting  parties  are  not  blood  relations,  this 
objection  seems  to  many  of  us  strange,  and  we  do  not  know 
why  Hamlet  thus  characterizes  the  union  until  we  remember 
that  the  theological  law  of  Shakespeare's  day,  despite  Henry 
VIII  and  the  Reformation,  was  still  that  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  church.  From  the  theological  point  of  view  the 
marriage  comes  within  the  forbidden  unions,  and  is  there- 
fore incestuous.  It  is  pertinent  to  secure  the  opinion  of  the 
church. 

"Three  .  .  .  impediments,"  says  Simon  Augustine 
Blackmore,  S.  J.,^^  ''directly  affected  Claudius  and  in  fact 
any  one  of  them  sufficed  to  invalidate  his  attempted  {sic) 
marriage  with  the  Queen.  The  first  was  the  law  that  pro- 
hibited one  from  marrying  his  deceased  brother's  wife  with- 
out a  dispensation."^^  'The  second  concerned  the  criminal 
seduction  of  a  consort  on  the  promise  of  marriage  after  the 
death  of  the  husband.  .  .  The  third  impediment  was  a 
law  which  prohibited  and  nullified  the  marriage*  of  the  man 
who  murdered  the  husband  of  his  accomplice  in  adultery  in 
order  to  marry  her."  From  these  premises  Father  Black- 
more  argues  that  "the  marriage  of  Claudius  was  only  puta- 
tive or  supposed,  and  therefore  null  and  void,  and  this  fact 
he  [Shakespeare]  would  impress  upon  our  minds  by  fre- 
quent repetitions."^^ 

Unfortunately  the  lines  which  Father  Blackmore  cites 
do  not  prove  what  he  wants  them  to  prove  ;^2  they  merely 
indicate  Hamlet's  desire  that  his  mother  shall  cease  to  have 
relations  with  Claudius,  and  Gertrude's  confession  of  a 
guilty  conscience.  Far  from  repeating  that  the  marriage 
is  "only  putative  or  supposed"  Shakespeare  at  no  time  says 


^^The  Riddle  of  Hamlet  and  the  Newest  Answers,  Boston,  1917,  pp.  46-49.  All 
of  chapter  VII  (Hamlet's  Right  to  the  Crown)  is  of  interest  at  this  point.  Father 
Blackmore  believes  that  Hamlet  was  a  good  Catholic. 

^"See  Leviticus  18:16  and  20:21.  Father  Blackmore  could  strengthen  his  case  by- 
calling  attention  to  the  penalty  attached  to  such  a  union.  "They  shall  be  childless," 
runs  the  second  passage. 

^iQp.   cit.,  p.  51. 

32Act  III,  Sc.  iv,  88-93 ;  94-96 ;  140-152 ;  156-160.  Father  Blackmore  prints  these 
ae    though    they    were    all    one   passage. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  81 

that  the  marriage  was  only  ''supposed."  Claudius  an- 
nounces the  completed  marriage  in  open  court.  Hamlet 
thinks  of  it  as  legal : 

"the  funeral  baked-meats 
Did  coldly  furnish  forth  the  marriage  tables. 
Would  I  had  met  my  dearest  foe  in  heaven 
Or  ever  I  had  seen  that  day,  Horatio!" 

(I,  ii,  180-183) 

Does  Father  Blackmore  suppose  that  they  had  a  wedding 
banquet  without  any  wedding?     The  ghost,  in  saying 

"Let  not  the  royal  bed  of  Denmark  be 
A  couch  for  luxury  and  damned  incest," 

does  not  imply  anything  except  disgust  with  the  acts  of 
Claudius  and  Gertrude;  does  not  imply,  in  short,  that  the 
wedding  was  "supposed."  And  weak  as  the  church  in  Den- 
mark is  represented  to  be,^^  we  can  not  imagine  that  the 
king  and  queen  of  Denmark  are  living  together  without  a 
wedding  ceremony  having  been  performed.  There  would 
have  been  instant  reproof  from  the  church;  the  stubborn 
priest  can  say  at  Ophelia's  grave : 

"No  more  be  done: 
We  should  profane  the  service  of  the  dead 
To  sing  a  requiem  and  such  rest  to  her 
As  to  peace-parted  souls," 

(V,  i,  229-232) 

against  the  wishes  of  the  court  and  the  royal  command, 
and  he  would  have  been  equally  zealous  to  prevent  the  open 
scandal  Father  Blackmore's  statement  presupposes.  Royal 
marriages  are  not  made  in  the  dark,  nor  was  this;  a  cere- 
mony that  satisfied  the  court  and  the  participants,  a  cere- 
mony that  seemed  legal,  a  ceremony,  indeed,  that  must  have 
satisfied  the  officiating  minister,  was  performed;  a  priest 
officiated  at  it;  and  Hamlet  is  helpless.     The  marriage  was 


^".     .     .     the  Church  which  alone  could  act  in  the  matter  had  in  Denmark  no  rep- 
resentative with   sufficient  power  to  derogate   from  the  law."     Op.   cit.,  p.   46. 


82  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

not  "attempted";  it  was  completed  to  the  satisfaction  of 
every  one  concerned. 

Unfortunately  for  this  critic  also,  there  is  no  ground  for 
supposing  that  the  second  law  he  quotes  can  operate  in  this 
case:  that  concerning  "the  criminal  seduction  of  a  consort 
on  the  promise  of  marriage  after  the  death  of  her  husband." 
Since  Gertrude  did  not  know  of  the  murder  (on  Father 
Blackmore's  own  showing),  she  could  not  have  been  se- 
duced "on  the  promise  of  marriage  after  the  death  of  her 
husband"  because  she  did  not  know  when  her  husband  was 
going  to  die.  For  all  she  knew  old  Hamlet  might  live  to  be 
a  hundred.  Not  even  a  very  stupid  person  could  be  se- 
duced by  a  promise  of  this  sort. 

The  case  rests,  then,  upon  the  first  and  third  of  the  ec- 
clesiastical prohibitions  cited  by  the  reverend  father.  Let 
us  consider  that  forbidding  "incest."  Once  again  the  at- 
tentive reader  must  be  struck  by  the  fact  that  Hamlet  is 
the  only  one  who  objects;  and  that  he  does  not  object  to 
anybody  but  himself  until  some  months  after  the  ceremony ! 
Even  then  he  does  not  tell  Horatio  that  the  marriage  was 
incestuous;  he  says  merely  that  the  king  has  "whored" — 
i.  e.,  debauched — his  mother.  The  play  scene,  with  its  close 
parallel  to  the  story  of  Gertrude  and  Claudius,  marriage  and 
all,  is  staged  in  order  that  Horatio  may  with  the  very  com- 
ment of  his  soul  observe  the  uncle  and  discover  if  his  oc- 
culted guilt  does  not  unkennel  itself  in  one  speech^ — con- 
cerning what? 

"One  scene  [that]  comes  near  the  circumstance 
Which  I  have  told  thee  of  my  father's  death." 

(Ill,  ii,  74-75) 

There  is  no  mention  of  incest  here!  And  Hamlet  does  not 
tell  his  mother  she  has  committed  incest — he  tells  her  that 
she  is  a  spiritual  traitor  to  his  father.  The  sole  time  that 
Hamlet  mentions  incest  to  anyone  in  the  play  is  when  he 
stabs  his  uncle: 

"Here,  thou  incestuous,  murderous,  damned  Dane, 
Drink  off  this  potion.". 

(V,  ii,  317-318) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  83 

Now  a  more  powerful,  a  more  crushing  charge,  than  the 
charge  of  incest  can  hardly  be  imagined,  but  Hamlet  does 
not  make  such  a  charge;  like  so  many  of  his  arguments, 
it  will  not  work ;  others  do  not — it  is  clear — view  the  mar- 
riage with  abhorrence  for  the  reason  that  Hamlet,  and 
Father  Blackmore,  advance.^* 

The  church  itself  has,  by  its  representative,  performed 
the  ceremony.  This  is  plain.  Claudius,  far  from  palliat- 
ing the  charge  of  incest,  publicly  announces  the  relation  of 
Gertrude  to  his  brother  and  himself: 

"...  our  sometime  sister,  now  our  queen, 


Have  we.  . . 
Taken  to  wife." 

(I,  ii,  8-14) 

This  is  strange  language  for  a  marriage  that  is  only  puta- 
tive or  supposed.  Furthermore,  nobody  objects.  The  court 
could  see  nothing  improper  in  the  proceeding ;  sanctioned  it, 
indeed,  without  a  dissenting  voice.  The  church — strong 
enough  to  prevent  the  Christian  burial  of  Ophelia — makes 
no  move  to  annul  the  marriage,  once  it  has  been  performed, 
though  one  would  suppose  that  a  clever  man  like  Hamlet 
might  set  in  motion  the  enginery  of  that  church  to  help  him 
toward  his  end.  And  Hamlet  does  not  tell  his  mother  to 
dissolve  the  marriage — he  asks  her  to  abstain  from  his 
uncle's  bed;  but  she  remains,  nonetheless,  the  legal  wife  of 
Claudius.  In  short,  there  is  a  difficulty  here  that  Father 
Blackmore  does  not  meet. 

In  this  respect  it  is  clear  that  the  theological  law  is  but 
one  point  of  view.  Hamlet  is  a  product  of  the  Renaissance. 
It  was  written  for  the  Globe  Theatre,  and  for  an  audience 
which  viewed  Catholic  Spain  with  abhorrence,  remembered 
the  reign  of  Bloody  Mary,  and  approved  of  the  beheading 


^I  have  fallen  into  a  contradiction  of  language  here  more  apparent  than  real.  I 
am  examining  every  possible  statement  that  Hamlet  makes  against  his  uncle;  most 
of  these  are  found  in  the  soliloquies  or  in  the  scene  with  the  ghost.  It  is  noteworthy 
how  few   of  Hamlet's   charges   are  made  public. 


84  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

of  Catholic  Mary  Stuart.  As  a  matter  of  practical  drama- 
turgy Shakespeare  could  not  expect  to  impress  his  audience 
with  the  horror  of  the  marriage  by  the  employment  of  a 
weapon  of  Catholic  theology.  Hamlet,  moreover,  is  a  scholar, 
a  philosopher,  and  a  sceptic,  who  doubts  the  ghost  he  has 
seen,  doubts  the  purgatory  the  ghost  comes  from,  doubts 
whether  the  after  life  be  the  Catholic  heaven  or 

"something  after  death, 
The  undiscover'd  country  from  whose  bourn 
.    No  traveller  returns,"^^ 

(III,  i,  78-80) 

until  his  perplexity 

"puzzles  the  will. 
And  makes  us  rather  bear  those  ills  we  have 
Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of." 

(Ill,  i,  80-82) 

Hamlet,  in  fine,  is  no  Catholic  to  whom  such  a  marriage 
would  be  abhorrent  merely  because  it  was  "theological  in- 
cest."^^  We  must  conclude,  in  fine,  that  the  incest  prohi- 
bition did  not  seem  to  Hamlet  or  the  court  or  the  audience 
of  that  time,  an  ultimate  test  of  moral  truth,  but  represented 
a  conflict  of  standards — a  conflict  peculiarly  characteristic 
of  a  dramatic  product  of  the  English  Renaissance  and  of  a 
country  which  had  had  its  Henry  VIII.  It  is  Hamlet  who 
utters  the  pregnant  line:  "there's  nothing  either  good  or 
bad,  but  thinking  makes  it  so."^"^ 

The  king,  says  Father  Blackmore,  is  "theoretically  a 
Catholic."^^  The  same  writer  characterizes  the  king's  so- 
liloquy as  "terribly  in  earnest  and  sincere,"  "the  heart- 
searching  of  a  guilty  soul  that  exhibits  more  clearly  in  the 
concrete  than  would  an  abstract  treatise,  all  the  elements 


^^It  is  strange  how  few  have  noted  that  the  ghost  is  a  traveller  returning  from 
that  bourn  and  bringing  information  about  it,  and  that  Hamlet  doubts  both  the  in- 
formation and  the  ghost. 

^I  say  that  Hamlet  doubts,  not  denies.  Hamlet  of  course  speaks  of  heaven  and 
hell  and  recognizes  the  validity  of  prayer  when  he  watches  the  king  on  his  knees. 
But  he  is  not  a  thorough  believer. 

3^11,  ii,  249. 

380p.  cit.,  p.  315. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  85 

of  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  repentance.  •.  .  when  at- 
tempting to  burst  asunder  the  captive  bonds  that  hold  him 
enslaved  in  sin."^^  Yet  this  king  v^ho  searches  his  heart, 
who  "exhibits  all  the  elements  of  the  Catholic  doctrine  of 
repentance"  does  not  even  think  of  the  sin  of  incest  he  has 
committed,  than  which  not  even  murder  is  more  black  and 
damnable!  His  thought  is  entirely  upon  the  assassination 
and  its  effects — crown,  ambition,  queen — but  it  does  not 
occur  to  him  when  he  searches  his  heart,  that  his  marriage 
is  an  incestuous  one.  If  he  considered  it  such,  it  would  be 
difficult  not  to  think  that  his  heart  would  be  as  chilled  by  the 
thought  of  so  awful  a  crime. 

There  is  still  another  factor  which  must  be  taken  into 
account.  Beyond  a  certain  point  in  tragedy,  horror  may 
not  go.  Now  there  are  horrors  enough  in  Hamlet  without 
the  addition  of  incest.  Adultery  and  assassination  usher  it 
in,  a  ghost  begins  it,  there  are  one  case  of  real  insanity  and 
one  of  supposed  insanity,  we  have  one  case  of  suicide,  one  of 
attempted  assassination,  one  of  riot  and  attempted  assass- 
ination, two  instances  of  avowed  revenge,  two  murders  off 
stage,  and  five  deaths  on  the  stage,  four  of  which  occur  with- 
in five  minutes  of  one  another,  and  the  whole  ends  with  the 
conquest  of  the  country  by  a  foreign  army.  Even  for  an 
Elizabethan  play  this  is  a  good  deal.  To  suppose  that 
Shakespeare  intended  to  add  to  this  accumulation  of  vio- 
lence, horror's  crown  of  horror^incest — is  to  suppose  him 
lacking  in  sound  dramatic  sense.  What,  then,  is  our  way 
out  of  the  difficulty? 

We  may  suppose  simply  that  the  church  sanctioned  the 
marriage.  Father  Blackmore  states  that  canon  law  "pro- 
hibited one  from  marrying  his  deceased  brother's  wife 
without  a  dispensation."  Obviously,  even  in  the  eyes  of  the 
church,  this  sort  of  incest  is  not  absolute :  dispensations  can 
be  obtained.  And  since  no  one — not  even  Hamlet — ques- 
tions the  legality  of  the  marriage,  since  a  ceremony  was 
performed  and  a  priest  must  have  performed  it,  we  may, 
if  we  like,  assume  that  Claudius  secured  a  dispensation. 
But  I  think  it  is  simpler  to  assume  that  the  whole  matter 

390p.  cit. 


86  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

seemed  to  Shakespeare  of  minor  importance.  He  was  not 
writing  a  play  that  turned  on  Catholic  theology.  The  ques- 
tion of  whether  the  marriage  violates  canon  law  was  not 
his  dramatic  problem.^^  Hence,  he  does  not  indicate  whether 
a  dispensation  was  obtained  or  not,  simply  because  that 
question  seemed  to  him  to  possess  little  consequence,  one 
way  or  the  other.  And  much  of  the  language  that  he  gives 
to  Hamlet  makes  quite  as  good  sense  if  we  remember  that 
"incestuous"*^  was  used  in  Elizabethan  times,  to  designate 
not  only  incest,  but  adultery,  or  loosely,  all  violations  of  sex- 
ual ethics.  Accordingly,  if  we  sum  up  our  examination  of 
the  problem,  we  must  conclude,  I  believe,  that  the  question 
of  whether  the  marriage  of  Gertrude  and  Claudius  was  in- 
cestuous seemed  to  all  concerned — to  Shakespeare  and  his 
audience,  to  the  court,  to  Claudius  himself,  to  Gertrude, 
even  to  Hamlet — either  a  matter  of  little  moment  or  a 
purely  technical  violation  of  church  law,  which  Hamlet 
might  or  might  not  use  in  his  denunciation  of  Claudius  as 
he  found  I  it  expedient  to  do  so. 

For  Father  Blackmore  advances  a  third  and  more  sub- 
stantial reason  for  our  dislike  of  the  marriage  in  Hamlet. 
Canon  law,  he  says,  prohibits  and  nullifies  the  marriage  of 
a  man  who  murdered  the  husband  of  his  accomplice  in  order 
to  marry  her.  The  author  very  properly  qualifies  his  lan- 
guage by  admitting  that  this  impediment  was  unknown  to 
the  queen.  Hence,  the  guilt  of  the  act  is  not  hers,  but 
Claudius',  and  his  guilt  arises,  not  from  the  marriage  but 
from  the  murder  that  is  the  cause  of  the  marriage.  We 
come  back,  in  other  words,  to  our  original  position,  that  the 
murder  of  his  brother  is  Claudius'  tragic  fault.  We  sym- 
pathize with  Hamlet,  we  turn  from  the  guilty  couple,  be- 
cause theology  and  universal  moral  judgment  here  coincide; 
we  feel  that  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to  murder  his  mistress' 
husband. 

^^^In  point  of  law  in  Elizabethan  England,  "marriage  required  no  religious  cere- 
mony for  its  validity,  although  the  omission  of  it  was  an  offence."  Shakespeare's 
England,    Vol.    I    (1917).   Chap.    XIII,    Laiv,    by   Arthur   Underbill. 

^^However,  it  should  be  noted  that  Shakespeare  uses  "incestuous"  but  five  times : 
Hamlet  I,  ii,  157  ;  I,  v,  42  ;  III,  iii,  90 ;  V,  ii,  336  ;  King  Lear,  III,  ii,  55 ;  and 
that   his   usage  is   consistent.     See   Schmidt's   Lexicon   and   Barlett's   Concordance. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  87 

And  when  we  have  admitted  this,  we  observe  that  the 
dramatic  problem  of  the  play  increases  in  interest.  For 
Gertrude,  like  Oedipus,  in  this  respect  is  an  unwitting  of- 
fender. She  is  guilty  of  adultery,  but  she  believes  that  she 
has  legitimized  her  passion  by  the  marriage  with  Claudius, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  audience  knows  what  she  does  not 
know :  that  Claudius  is  a  murderer  and  that  the  marriage 
is  unholy.  Our  pity  goes  out  to  her.  And  by  a  fine  and 
subtle  piece  of  work  on  Shakespeare's  part,  she  never  learns, 
so  to  speak,  why  it  is  that  we  condemn  her.  She  never 
learns  that  Claudius  has  killed  her  first  husband.  And  if 
we  examine  the  question  of  why  Shakespeare  never  lets  her 
learn  this  fact,  we  see  at  once  the  reason :  she  is,  after  all, 
a  subordinate  character;  he  has  time,  following  Hamlet's 
denunciation  of  her  treason  to  his  father's  memory,  to  paint 
her  sense  of  guilt,  but  in  the  rush  of  the  play,  he  could  not 
have  time  to  paint  the  horror  that  would  come  over  her, 
did  she  learn  that  her  husband  was  the  guiltiest  man  in 
Denmark.  From  her  point  of  view  he  has  done  no  evil; 
he  is  her  lover,  and  she  worships  him ;  he  has  not,  like  her- 
self, betrayed  the  trust  of  marriage.  Did  she  learn  that 
her  soul's  idol  was  an  assassin,  and  an  assassin  of  her  hus- 
band, her  sense  of  guilt,  her  horror,  her  remorse,  would 
as  it  were,  stop  the  play  and  usurp  the  center  of  the  action 
at  the  very  time  when  all  must  be  concentrated  upon  Ham- 
let. And  did  she  believe  in  addition  that  the  marriage  was 
incestuous,  her  tragic  situation  would  be  unbearable.  Ac- 
cordingly, Shakespeare  confines  her  guilt  to  the  guilt  of  the 
love  affair,  and  stresses  the  guilt  of  Claudius  as  being  the 
guilt  of  murder. 

Claudius  has  murdered  his  brother,  his  mistress'  hus- 
band. That  is  the  sole  dramatic  reason  why  the  marriage 
is  universally  to  be  condemned.  The  offense  can  not  be 
palliated,  can  not  be  extenuated.  It  is  great,  it  is  criminal. 
But  Claudius  differs  from  Macbeth.  He  is  strong  enough 
to  keep  the  secret  to  himself.  In  the  utmost  torture  of 
his  soul  he  does  not,  like  his  Scotch  brother,  torment  his 
wife  with  his  remorse.  Policy,  perhaps;  even  cowardice; 
yet  what  would  he  gain  by  confessing  all  to  Gertrude  ? 


88  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

After  his  fashion  he  loves  her,  and  he  is  just  enough  not  to 
add  to  her  own  sense  of  guilt  by  informing  her  that  she  has 
married  a  fratricide.  The  problem  is  his,  and  he  keeps  it. 
In  this  respect  Hamlet  and  the  ghost  approve  his  judgment, 
for  both  feel  it  unnecessary  and  unfair  to  drag  Gertrude 
into  the  guilt  of  the  assassination. 

For  Hamlet  is  not,  after  all,  a  theological  problem,  but  a 
problem  in  the  ethics  of  conduct.  Moral  judgments  tend 
to  be  negative  and  barren  of  results.  The  murder  v^as 
wrong  in  triple  sense,  but  it  is  done,  and  being  done,  what  is 
Claudius  to  do?  It  is  easy  to  say,  let  him  confess,  let  him 
refrain  from  marrying  the  queen.  If  he  confesses,  Den- 
mark will  go  to  pieces.  If  he  refrains  from  marrying  the 
queen,  he  leaves  Gertrude  in  a  fearful  situation,  and  adds 
to  her  burden  that  which  she  has  no  business  to  bear.  And 
last  and  most  curious  of  all,  there  is  no  tribunal  to  which 
he  can  appeal.  As  king,  he  is  the  fountainhead  of  justice 
in  the  state.  He  can  not  appeal  to  the  church,  which  is  at 
once  a  negligible  factor  at  Elsinore,  and  at  cross  purposes 
with  itself :  it  compromises  on  the  question  of  the  marriage, 
it  compromises  in  the  funeral  of  Ophelia.  He  can  not  ap- 
peal to  his  conscience : 

"0  what  form  of  prayer 
Can  serve  my  turn?     *  Forgive  me  my  foul  murder'? 
That  can  not  be.  . ." 

Of  all  Shakespeare's  characters  is  there  any  in  so  fearful 
a  situation  as  he? 

(5)  Claudius  is  a  murderer  who  has  (a)  killed  his 
brother  and  and  (b)  attempted  the  assassination  of  Hamlet. 
We  are  brought  at  length  to  the  great  problem  of  Claudius' 
tragic  guilt.  Of  Hamlet's  five  charges,  the  first  and  second 
are  not  true;  the  third  is  open  to  argument;  the  fourth  is 
true  only  in  a  limited  degree ;  and  the  fifth  remains.  Clau- 
dius has  murdered  his  king.  Worse  than  that,  this  king 
was  his  paramour's  husband.  Worse  than  that,  it  was  frat- 
ricide. Furthermore,  the  murder  was  deliberate,  cold- 
blooded  and   ingenious.     Nothing  can   alter,   nothing   can 


The  King  in  Hamlet  89 

change   it.     From  this   one   initial  crime  springs   all  the 
guilt  and  sorrow  of  the  play,  a  tale  of 

"carnal,  bloody  and  unnatural  acts, 
Of  accidental  judgements,  casual  slaughters, 
Of  deaths  put  on  by  cunning  and  forced  cause, 

Fall'n  on  the  inventors'  heads." 

(V,  ii,  373-377) 

That  Claudius  is  neither  a  fool  nor  a  mere  villain  must 
by  this  time  be  clear.  Why,  then,  did  he  kill  his  brother? 
Because  he  desired  to  become  king.  But  why  did  he  desire 
to  become  king?  Shakespeare  does  not  answer  this  ques- 
tion because  to  do  so  would  complicate  an  already  compli- 
cated play.  We  may  surmise  what  we  please.  Envy,  sel- 
fishness, ambition — all  the  complex  motives  of  a  man  who 
trusts  more  to  his  head  than  to  his  heart,  enter  into  the 
answer;  and  we  must  never  forget  that  in  executing  the 
murder,  Claudius  was  as  cool,  as  crafty,  and, as  cunning  as 
any  Italian  villain.  We  may  surmise  what  we  please.  What 
sustained  him  in  his  hours  of  watching  Hamlet  for  an  op- 
portunity to  do  the  deed?  Was  it  mere  envy?  Was  it  not 
rather  the  itch  of  competency  to  seize  the  office  in  which 
Claudius  felt  his  extraordinary  powers  would  have  their 
widest  play?  As  between  the  bluff  Hamlet  and  the  Ital- 
ianate  Claudius  did  he  feel  that  he,  Claudius,  was  the  man 
born  to  be  king?  However  these  things  may  be,  it  is  clear 
that  Claudius,  lacking  as  he  is  in  passion,  did  not  perform 
the  murder  out  of  personal  envy  alone,  but  rather  out  of  a 
complex  of  motives,  in  which  a  feeling  of  competency,  a 
conviction  of  the  worth  of  his  own  powers,  played  no  small 
share. 

And  so,  combining  desire  and  policy,  Claudius  seduces 
Gertrude  and  murders  Hamlet.  Having  seduced  the  queen 
he  comes,  in  his  fashion,  to  love  her.  Having  murdered  his 
brother,  he  comes  to  repent.  He  begins  his  new  life  by 
striving  to  wipe  out  all  memory  of  the  deed;  he  does  not 
speak  of  it  even  to  hii;nself.  He  comes  to  the  throne  amid 
general  approbation,  and  promptly  and  skillfully  seizes  the 


90  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

reins  of  government.  There  is  no  move  which  a  wise  ruler 
should  make  that  he  does  not  make.  His  public  character 
awakens  respect,  his  private  life  is  admirable.  No  one 
knows  of  his  crime.  He  resolves  to  do  penance  for  it  by  a 
life  devoted  to  wise  and  good  actions — he  will  be  a  sagacious 
ruler,  a  devoted  husband,  a  careful  and  considerate  father. 

Then  there  crosses  his  path  the  one  man  he  has  striven 
to  conciliate.  For  reasons  inexplicable  to  Claudius  this 
man  exhibits  a  settled  hostility  to  the  king.  It  is  the  son 
of  the  man  he  has  murdered.  Like  Macbeth  before  Mac- 
duff, Claudius  does  not  desire  more  of  that  blood  upon  his 
hands.  His  conscience  is  beginning  to  gnaw  at  him;  he 
even  pictures  that  he  can  make  reparation  to  the  son  for  the 
wrong  done  the  father:  he  will  give  to  Hamlet  the  crown 
he  took  from  the  murdered  man,  and  so  he  resolves  to  make 
of  Hamlet  a  competent  and  careful  king.  But  Hamlet  sud- 
denly exhibits  a  strange  and  iron  resolve,  a  bitter  determin- 
ation to  treat  Claudius  as  an  enemy.  The  king  endeavors 
to  search  out  the  springs  of  this  determination,  and  fails: 
it  is  not  ambition,  it  is  not  love,  it  is  not  any  public  expres- 
sion of  hostility  to  the  marriage,  for  Hamlet  makes  none. 
For  the  present  no  other  possibility  occurs  to  him. 

When  the  king  sets  spies  on  Hamlet,  we  jump  to  the  con- 
clusion that  he  is  a  mean,  treacherous  villain.  But  is  he 
necessarily  one?  He  could  have  set  assassins  in  their  stead. 
Macbeth,  who  also  kills  a  king,  murders  Banquo  on  a  pre- 
text more  shadowy  than  Hamlet's  "madness" — a  riddle  jus- 
tifies the  deed.  lago  stabs  Roderigo  with  the  same  calm- 
ness and  lack  of  motive  with  which  he  misleads  Othello. 
The  path  of  Richard  is  a  path  of  blood.  The  bastard  Ed- 
mund forges  letters  and  engineers  assassinations  like  a 
super-butcher.  Clearly  Claudius  is  none  of  these.  Hamlet 
is  the  king's  enemy,  but  Claudius  does  not  imitate  the  other 
Shakespearian  villains;  the  life  of  Hamlet  is  precious  to 
Gertrude,  to  the  state,  to  the  future — and  he  forbears  to 
strike.  It  is  not,  as  with  Brutus,  weakness  of  will.  It  is  not, 
as  with  Antony,  the  vacillation  of  passion.  It  is  not,  as  with 
Macbeth,  sheer  indecision.  At  the  time  he  reaches  his  crucial 
decision   concerning   Hamlet,   his   sagacity,   his   foresight, 


The  King  in  Hamlet  91 

his  promptness  in  reaching  conclusions  were  never  better. 
Clearly,  his  decision  is  a  deliberate  one.  Why  does  not 
Claudius  contrive  Hamlet's  assassination?  It  is  because 
Hamlet  is  the  incarnation  of  that  reparation  which  he  dare 
not  publicly  make. 

Then  suddenly  this  inveterate  enemy  springs  a  trap — 
the  play.  Claudius  at  last  learns  that  Hamlet  knows  his 
secret — how  or  why  he  can  not  discover.  Does  he,  like  the 
great  Shakespearian  villains,  immediately  scheme  for  Ham- 
let's death?  Instead,  his  conscience  flares  up;  he  retires 
from  the  hall  "marvellous  distempered" — with  choler,  says 
Guildenstern,  excitedly  seeking  words  in  the  confusion,  but 
we  see  in  a  moment  what  species  of  choler  this  was.  Not 
yet  does  he  resolve  to  kill  his  enemy ;  he  will  remove  him  to 
England.  Then  we  see  him  struggling  with  the  burden  of 
his  guilt: 

"0,  my  offence  is  rank,  it  smells  to  heaven; 
It  hath  the  primal  eldest  curse  upon't, 
A  brother's  murder.     Pray  can  I  not, 
Though  inclination  be  as  sharp  as  will: 
My  stronger  guilt  defeats  my  strong  intent. 
And  like  a  man  to  double  business  bound, 
I  stand  in  pause  where  I  shall  first  begin. 
And  both  neglect.     What  if  this  cursed  hand 
Were  thicker  than  itself  wit?i  brother's  blood. 
Is  there  not  rain  enough  in  the  sweet  heavens 
To  wash  it  white  as  snow?     Whereto  serves  mercy 
But  to  confront  the  visage  of  offense? 
And  what's  in  prayer  but  this  twofold  force. 
To  be  forestalled  ere  we  come  to  fall. 
Or  pardon'd  being  down?     Then  I'll  look  up; 
My  fault  is  past.     But  O,  what  form  of  prayer 
Can  serve  my  turn?     'Forgive  me  my  foul  murder'? 
That  cannot  be,  since  I  am  still  possess'd 
Of  those  effects  for  which  I  did  the  murder. 
My  crown,  .mine  own  ambition  and  my  queen. 
May  one  be  pardon'd  and  retain  the  offence? 
In  the  corrupted  currents  of  this  world 
Offence's  gilded  hand  may  shove  by  justice. 
And  oft  'tis  seen  the  wicked  prize  itself 
Buys  out  the  law:  but  'tis  not  so  above; 


92  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

There  is  no  shuffling,  there  the  action  lies 

In  his  true  nature,  and  we  ourselves  compell'd 

Even  to  the  teeth  and  forehead  of  our  faults 

To  give  in  evidence.     What  then?     What  rests? 

Try  what  repentance  can:  what  can  it  not  ? 

Yet  what  can  it  when  one  can  not  repent? 

O  wretched  state!     O  bosom  black  as  death! 

0  limed  soul,  that  struggling  to  be  free 

Art  more  engaged!     Help,  angels!     make  assay! 

Bow,  stubborn  knees,  and,  heart  with  strings  of  steel, 

Be  soft  as  sinews  of  the  new-born  babe! 

All  may  be  well." 

(Ill,  iii,  36-72) 

For  concentrated  torment  there  is  nothing  like  this  in  all 
Shakespeare,  save  the  last  of  Othello.  The  man  of  strong 
will  is  in  a  blind  alley  wherein  his  will  can  not  help  him: 
he  who  has  affirmed  the  world  must  now  affirm  the  spirit, 
and  can  not.  So  terrible  is  his  anguish,  so  sincere  his  strug- 
gle that  his  inveterate  enemy,  coming  upon  him  at  so  oppor- 
tune a  moment,  stays  his  hand : 

"O,  this  is    hire  and  salary,  not  revenge." 

(Ill,  iii,  79) 

There  is  for  Claudius  no  loophole,  no  hope  of  peace : 

"My  words  fly  up,  my  thoughts  remain  below: 
Words  without  thoughts  never  to  heaven  go." 

(Ill,  iii,  97-98) 

In  proportion  as  the  struggle  with  Hamlet  grows  more  and 
more  deadly,  the  struggle  of  the  king  with  himself  increases 
in  bitterness.  Claudius  learns  from  Gertrude  that  he  has 
been  the  indirect  cause  of  the  death  of  one  of  his  dearest 
friends: 

"O  heavy  deed! 
It  had  been  so  with  us,  had  we  been  there: 
His  liberty  is  full  of  threats  to  all. 
To  you  yourself,  to  us,  to  everyone." 

(IV,    i,    12-15) 


The  King  in  Hamlet  93 

And  what  is  the  king's  half -sincere  conclusion? 

"Alas,  how  shall  this  bloody  deed  be  answer'd? 
It  will  be  laid  to  us,  whose  providence 
Should  have  kept  short,  restrained  and  out  of  haunt, 
This  mad  young  man:  but  so  much  was  our  love, 
We  would  not  understand  what  was  most  fit. 
But,  like  the  owner  of  a  foul  disease, 
To  keep  it  from  divulging,  let  it  feed 
Even  on  the  pith  of  life." 

(IV,  i,  16-23) 

His  duty  as  an  individual  is  at  direct  odds  with  his  duty  as 
king.  And  he  can  not  tell  Gertrude  the  truth,  he  must  play 
the  hypocrite  even  with  her:  it  is  part  of  his  punishment. 
In  the  extremity  of  this  strange  duel  in  the  dark  he  has  for- 
gotten that  he  does  not  stand  a  single  man ;  he  is  the  state ; 
all  depends  upon  him;  and  yet  the  affection  of  the  woman 
who  worships  him  is  bound  up  with  the  very  life  of  his  in- 
veterate enemy.  He  has  come  to  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
Where  shall  he  turn?  What  shall  he  do?  His  opponent 
forces  him  to  more  and  more  fearful  measures.  How  far 
has  he  departed  from  the  path  he  originally  marked  out  for 
himself!  He  must  decide  on  action;  against  his  very  will 
he  must  decide.     He  has  no  illusions  as  to  what  he  is  doing : 

"diseases  desperate  grown 
By  desperate  appliance  are  relieved, 
Or  not  at  cilL" 

(IV,  iii,  9-11) 

He  makes  his  great  decision,  and  it  is  wrong.  He  decides 
that  Hamlet  must  die.  It  is  the  second  great  crisis  of  his 
life,  but  unlike  the  first,  this  is  not  wholly  of  his  choosing. 
It  is  the  old  story  of  the  ineluctibility  of  evil : 

"Howe'er  my  haps,  my  joys  were  ne'er  begun." 

(IV,  iii,  68) 

He  can  not  perform  the  penance  he  had  planned.  When 
Hamlet  is  at  length  out  of  the  country,  the  king  accordingly 
looks  around  him.  All  that  he  had  dreamed  on  is  quite, 
quite  o'erthrown : 


94  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

"0  Gertrude,  Gertrude, 
When  sorrows  come,  they  come  not  single  spies, 
But  in  battalions !     First,  her  father  slain : 
Next,  your  son  gone:  and  he  most  violent  author 
Of  his  own  just  remove:     the  people  muddied, 
Thick  and  unwholesome  in  their  thoughts  and  whispers, 
For  good  Polonius'  death;  and  we  have  done  but  greenly 
In  hugger-mugger  to  inter  him;  poor  Ophelia 
Divided  from  herself  and  her  fair  judgement," 

(IV,  V,  74-82) 

and  the  country,  under  the  leadership  of  Laertes,  is  rushing 
to  rebellion.     In  the  accents  of  despair  he  concludes : 

"O  my  dear  Gertrude,  this. 
Like  to  a  murdering-piece,  in  many  places 
Gives  me  superfluous  death," 

(IV,  V,  91-93) 

and  he  concludes  that  his  punishment  is  too  great  for  his 
crime.     It  is  his  privilege  to  strike  back. 

He  quells  the  riot,  and  wins  Laertes  to  him,  and  the  vic- 
tory gives  him  courage.     He  tells  Laertes  : 

"you  must  not  think 
That  we  are  made  of  stuff  so  flat  and  dull 
That  we  can  let  our  beard  be  shook  with  danger 
And  think  it  pastime.     You  shortly  shall  hear  more." 

(IV,  vii,  30-33) 

And  lo!  like  an  avenging  fury,  he  receives  at  that  moment 
a  letter  from  the  enemy  he  supposed  to  be  dead.  The  last 
that  is  good  in  Claudius  disappears.  He  could  say  with 
Macbeth : 

"I  am  in  blood 
Stepp'd  in  so  far,  that,  should  I  wade  no  more, 
Returning  were  as  tedious  as  go  o'er," 

except  that,  unlike  Macbeth,  he  has  done  but  one  murder. 
From  that  time  a  kind  of  fixed  insanity  seizes  him,  and  the 
destruction  of  Hamlet  becomes  his  mania,  and  he  gives  up 
everything — consideration    for    Gertrude,    the    affairs    of 


The  King  in  Hamlet  95 

state,  his  own  conscience — to  the  one  aim  of  wiping  out  this 
shadow  in  black,  this  nemesis  out  of  Wittenberg. 

Hamlet  returns  to  Elsinore.  He  knows  all.  They  meet 
like  wary  fencers  at  the  grave  of  Hamlet's  love.  Claudius 
knows  that  in  the  perfect  armor  of  his  defence  Hamlet  has 
at  last  found  a  flaw ;  that  he  has  documentary  evidence  that 
will  serve  to  convince  the  court  of  the  king's  treachery.  A 
cold  fury  seizes  the  king;  it  is  now  or  never;  and  he  con- 
centrates with  all  his  skill,  all  his  iron  power  of  will,  upon 
the  final  scene.  It  will  be  worthy  of  his  genius.  He  will 
play  off  the  son  of  one  murdered  man  against  the  son  of 
another  murdered  man;  the  one  shall  be  ostensibly  in  the 
wrong,  the  other  ostensibly  seeking  justice.  This  time  there 
shall  be  no  escape,  for  Laertes  is  a  master  of  the  foils. 
He  will  play  on  Hamlet's  vanity;  Hamlet 

"being  remiss, 
Most  generous  and  free  from  all  contriving, 
Will  not  peruse  the  foils,  so  that  with  ease. 
Or  with  a  little  shuffling,  you  may  choose 
A  sword  unbated." 

(IV,  vii,   134-138) 

If,  by  a  miracle,  the  contrivance  should  fail,  Laertes  shall 
anoint  his  rapier  with  a  poison  such  that 

"no  cataplasm  so  rare. 
Collected  from  all  simples  that  have  virtue 
Under  the  moon,  can  save  the  thing  from  death 
That  is  but  scratched  withal." 

(IV,  vii,  143-146) 

And  if  by  a  second  miracle  the  poisoned  sword  should  fail, 
the  king  will  prepare  a  deadly  cup.  But  all  fails  in  the 
very  moment  of  success;  he  who  commanded  events  is  by 
them  commanded,  and  by  a  kind  of  cold  sarcasm,  the  last 
words  the  king  hears  on  earth  are : 

"Here,  thou  incestuous,  murderous,  damned  Dane, 
Drink  off  this  potion," 

(V,  ii,  336-337) 


96  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

and  yet  to  every  one  of  these  charges  he  could  plead  how 
human  and  how  sorrowful  an  excuse! 

Hamlet  is  a  family  tragedy.  But  it  is  more,  it  is  a  royal 
tragedy,  a  duel  between  two  opposite  conceptions  of  moral- 
ity. How  much  has  Claudius  a  right  to  yield  to  the  state 
in  the  conduct  of  his  private  life?  How  much  has  Hamlet 
a  right  to  demand  from  the  state  in  the  pursuance  of  his 
private  vengeance?'  Has  Claudius  any  justification  in  kill- 
ing old  Hamlet,  though  the  public  good  results  therefrom? 
Has  young  Hamlet  a  right  to  murder  Claudius,  who  is  an 
able  and  a  needed  king?  On  the  one  hand  there  is  the 
worldly  uncle,  mature,  able,  a  shrewd  leader  of  men,  every 
inch  a  king,  the  salvation  of  Denmark,  an  accomplished 
diplomat,  the  man  for  the  place  and  the  hour ;  but  his  career 
is  founded  upon  private  crime,  and  although  from  such  a 
crime  innumerable  benefits  flow,  it  remains  a  crime  to  the 
end.  On  the  other  hand  is  the  scholar  Hamlet,  adroit  in 
his  own  way,  every  inch  a  prince,  but  by  nature  independent 
and  solitary,  unskilled  in  government,  young,  a  philosopher 
and  not  a  politician,  a  poet,  not  a  governor  of  men,  intent 
upon  the  laudable  purpose  of  exposing  and  punishing  the 
assassin  of  his  father,  and  in  the  pursuit  of  his  object,  pull- 
ing down  the  whole  structure  of  Danish  government,  caus- 
ing five  times  the  misery  that  Claudius  ever  caused,  de- 
feating at  length  the  utmost  skill  of  his  opponent  but  only 
at  the  cost  of  his  own  life  and  of  the  independence  of  his 
country.  The  love  of  Gertrude  is  the  king's  one  source  of 
comfort ;  it  is  for  Hamlet  a  low  infatuation,  and  in  the 
conflict  the  queen  like  all  the  rest  goes  down  to  destruction. 
The  torment  of  Cladius  is  subjective  and  individual,  and 
while  it  so  remains  Denmark  is  saved.  The  conscience  of 
Hamlet  goes  out  from  him  like  a  destroying  angel,  blasting 
all  it  touches — Ophelia,  Gertrude,  Polonius,  Guildenstern, 
Rosencrantz,  Laertes,  Denmark  itself.  Strange  play  and 
stranger  paradoxes!  The  opposing  forces  are  evenly 
matched,  the  duel  is  breathless,  the  question  is  not  resolved 
until  82  lines  before  the  end  of  the  drama !  And  yet  of  this 
intense  and  breathless  tragedy,  so  admirably  illustrative  of 


The  King  in  Hamlet  97 

Brunetiere's  law  of  the  drama,  our  actors  continue  to  make  a 
dramatic  poem  in  five  acts,  in  which  the  hero,  for  want  of 
an  opponent  worthy  of  him,  wanders  about  the  stage  ut- 
tering soHloquies  and  indulging  in  pleasantry  with  the 
minor  characters! 


We  can  not  treat  a  theatrical  piece  as  if  it  were  an  essay 
on  statecraft,  and  I  do  not  suppose  that  the  intricacies  of 
the  diplomatic  background  could  all  be  packed  into  any  pro- 
duction of  the  play,  and  made  clear  to  every  one,  nor  is  it 
necessary  that  this  should  be  done.  The  actor  must  know 
enormously  more  about  his  play  than  any  spectator,  and  as 
the  governmental  problem,  for  instance,  exists  in  Hamlet 
it  is  there  for  study.  Indeed,  only  as  the  actor  understands 
the  position  of  Claudius  in  the  economy  of  Denmark — only 
as  the  actor  who  plays  Hamlet  studies  that  same  problem — 
can  the  part  of  the  king  be  given  that  just  emphasis,  that 
careful  and  particularized  study  which  will  clarify  the  play 
by  illuminating  the  peculiar  difficulty  of  the  king's  ethical 
problem  at  the  same  time  that  it  illuminates  the  ethical 
problem  of  the  young  prince  and  the  obstacles  against  which 
he  must  contend.  For  drama  is  conflict,  William  Archer 
to  the  contrary,  and  in  modern  versions  there  is  little  con- 
flict in  Hamlet,  and  the  reason  is  clear.  If  our  analysis 
is  anywhere  near  correct,  it  is  clear  that  two  great  actors 
are  required  properly  to  present  the  tragedy — one  in  the 
part  of  Claudius,  one  in  the  part  of  the  prince,  and  the  more 
nearly  they  are  matched  in  ability,  the  more  exciting  be- 
comes the  struggle,  the  more  intense  our  interest,  the  more 
probable  the  bloody  and  terriflc  close. 

Now  in  all  that  I  have  said,  if  I  have  seemed  to  depreciate 
the  importance  of  Hamlet,  it  is  not  of  my  intent,  but  be- 
cause Hamlet  has  overwhelmed  the  play.  Hamlet  is  the 
hero  of  his  tragedy.  But  to  make  Hamlet  interesting  does 
not  require  that  we  make  Claudius  unreal.  Far  from  help- 
ing Hamlet,  we  have  damaged  the  tragedy  in  so  doing. 
The  hero  becomes  great  in  proportion  to  the  obstacle  he 


^8  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

overcomes  and  (within  due  limits)  the  more  complex  and 
human  we  make  Claudius,  the  greater  is  our  interest  in  the 
prince.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  the  more  even  the  contest, 
the  more  breathlessly  do  we  hang  on  the  result.  But  I  do 
not  believe  we  can  safely  cross  that  line :  the  rivals  can  not 
be  exactly  matched ;  one  or  the  other  must  prevail ;  we  must 
take  sides,  and  we  take  sides  with  the  prince  against  the 
king.  It  is  right  and  necessary  that  we  do  so.  These  are 
commonplaces,  which  I  recall  here  only  that  I  may  not  be 
misunderstood  and  that  they  may  answer  the  objection  that 
many  have  perhaps  already  made:  why  does  not  Shake- 
speare tell  us  more  clearly  what  he  means  by  Claudius? 
Why  have  we  been  wrong  all  these  years  ? 

The  manner  of  the  question  (supposing  it  to  be  put)  in- 
dicates that  the  problem  is  not  clearly  understood.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  the  correctness  of  our  information  con- 
cerning Claudius  so  much  as  it  is  a  question  of  the  manner 
in  which  that  information  is  to  be  presented.  Hamlet  is 
nat  the  hero  merely  because  we  feel  that  he  is  more  amiable 
than  the  king.  Richard  III  is  clearly  the  hero,  King  John 
is  clearly  the  hero,  of  those  plays,  and  they  are  not  pleasant 
characters,  nor  i^  Macbeth.  Indeed,  the  device  of  the  vil- 
lain as  hero  was  not  uncommon  in  Shakespeare's  age.  The 
hero  is  the  hero  normally  because  we  know  more  about  him 
than  we  do  about  anyone  else.  He  is  on  the  stage  oftener, 
we  hear  more  of  him,  we  are  informed  of  his  plans,  and  his 
are  the  frequent  soliloquies  that  make  clear  the  motives  of 
his  action.  We  see  him,  as  it  were,  in  complete  subjectiv- 
ity. But  the  other  characters  we  see  more  and  more  ob- 
jectively as  they  are  of  decreasing  importance.  Two  or 
three  closest  to  the  hero  we  know  subjectively  with  suffi- 
cient authority  to  follow  their  movements  with  apprecia- 
tion; the  others  scale  down  until  we  reach  the  lowest  group 
— the  first  and  second  gentlemen,  the  servants  and  messen- 
gers, whom  we  know  wholly  objectively  or  nearly  so.  Each 
character  in  Hamlet,  it  has  been  remarked,  could  be  made 
the  center  of  a  play. 

Accordingly,  we  know  Hamlet  subjectively  best  of  all. 


The  King  in  Hamlet  99 

In  addition  to  the  devices  listed  above,  humor,  which  v^ins 
sympathy,  is  wholly  related  to  him;  either  humorous  char- 
acters (Osric,  the  grave-diggers)  are  seen  only  in  relation 
to  him,  or  other  characters  become  humorous  only  in  his 
vicinity  (Polonius).  Clearly,  the  most  elementary  tests  of 
dramatic  construction  indicate,  however,  that  after  Hamlet 
Claudius  is  next  in  order  of  importance.  Save  one,  the 
remaining  soliloquies  are  his;  it  is  of  him  and  to  him  that 
people  talk ;  he  controls  events,  he  thwarts  the  hero,  and  a 
certain  sympathy  is  won  for  him  when  he  is  made  the  object 
of  one  of  the  love-interests  of  the  play.  Like  Macbeth  his 
character  lacks  comic  relief  for  the  reason  that  he  bears 
the  weightiest  load  of  tragic  guilt.  Shakespeare  does  for 
him  all  that  he  can  do  without  throwing  the  play  wholly  out 
of  proportion.  His  bulk  of  spoken  lines  is  next  to  that  of 
Hamlet's.  At  the  climax  of  the  play  we  are  given  that  ad- 
mirable glimpse  into  his  soul  during  the  scene  of  his  prayer. 
We  know  thereafter  that  he  is  in  the  wrong,  and  we  are 
satisfied  at  the  death  he  dies. 

But  to  say  that  Claudius  is  in  the  wrong  does  not  mean 
that  he  may  not  be  trying  to  right  himself,  or  prove  that 
the  hero  is  always  right.  If  the  hero  were  always  right  we 
should  be  displeased  at  Hamlet's  death,  but  we  are  not.  In 
other  words,  both  Claudius  and  Hamlet  are  engaged  in  com- 
plex ethical  problems,  both  in  a  sense  fail,  and  the  great  dif- 
ference between  them  is  mainly  that  we  know  more  of 
Hamlet's  difficulties  than  we  do  of  Claudius'.  They  are 
like  two  men,  one  of  whom  stands  so  close  to  us  that  we  can 
watch  the  minutest  expression  of  his  face  and  eyes,  whereas 
the  other  stands  a  little  farther  away,  so  that  we  have  fre- 
quently to  guess  what  he  is  saying  and  thinking,  from  a 
lesser  amount  of  detail,  a  less  adequate  fund  of  information. 
In  sum,  Shakespeare  tells  us  all  that  he  ought  to  tell  us 
about  Claudius ;  we  merely  refuse  to  see  it,  largely  because 
of  the  ''stars"  who  have  played  the  title-role. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  watch  the  results  were  the  star 
to  cast  himself  as  Claudius  instead  of  the  prince.  For  the 
inequality  between  the  parts  is  not  great,  and  seems  greater 


100  University  of  Texas  Bulletin 

only  as  our  modern  Hamlets  have  emphasized  a  disparity 
that  is  not  so  deep  as  they  think.  The  *'star"  who  plays 
Hamlet,  like  Aaron's  rod,  has  swallowed  up  all  the  other 
parts,  so  that  Hamlet  is  a  play  totally  out  of  proportion 
(how  badly  askew  a  play  may  be  thrown  by  undue  em- 
phasis on  one  part,  witness  Lord  Dundreary  and  Our  Amer- 
ican Cousin),  and  the  part  of  the  prince  has  been  over- 
emphasized by  two  devices.  In  the  first  place,  those  minor 
characters  against  which  the  histrionic  abilities  of  the  actor 
would  stick  fiery  off  (Polonius,  Ophelia,  the  grave-diggers) 
have  been  given  undue  importance.  In  the  second  place, 
modern  cuttings  have  retained  as  many  scenes  as  possible 
in  which  Hamlet  might  appear,  and  have  sheared  off  the 
scenes  in  which  he  does  not  appear — and  these  last  are 
scenes  mainly  dominated  by  the  king.  Accordingly,  the 
play  seems  to  break  down  toward  the  end.  In  the  first  and 
second  acts  Hamlet  and  the  king  are  roughly  of  about  equal 
importance ;  Act  III  is  Hamlet's,  but  Act  IV  is  the  king's, 
and  it  is  Act  IV  that  has  suffered.  A  different  casting  of 
the  star  would  reverse  this  process  with  interesting  results. 


C%^^:^ 


■.-.^. 


f'-.A"-  \'". 


